Meta adds real-time voice chat and animated avatars to its Muse app

Meta has added live voice conversations to Muse, its personal AI agent, so users can talk to it instead of typing. The update also gives Muse an animated avatar that reacts as the conversation goes on.

The feature is available now in the Muse app on phones, the web and Mac, but only in the US for the moment. Users start a call by tapping the phone icon in the top-right corner of the app.

During a call, users can interrupt Muse at any point, and it answers straight away. Muse can also keep working on tasks in the background while the conversation continues, for example, while the user is out on a walk.

Alongside the voice, the avatar shows facial expressions and gestures that match the tone of the conversation. It also reacts while the user is still speaking.

Users can choose how much of it they see. They can talk with voice only, keep the avatar next to the conversation, or open it full screen. There are also hundreds of voices with different personalities, and users can switch between them at any time.

At Connect, Meta also said users would be able to shape a voice by describing it, for example by asking for a different speed or accent.

Meta suggests using the feature to brainstorm ideas, plan a trip or practise for a job interview or a presentation.

The avatars run on Muse Realtime Avatar, a model built by Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company’s main AI unit. Meta first showed the technology at its Connect conference in September.

In tests run by Meta’s own raters, people preferred its avatars to those of rivals Runway and HeyGen, the company said. However, Meta has also said that not all of its demonstrations reflect the avatars available in the app.

Muse itself launched in September as Meta’s answer to AI agents such as ChatGPT. It runs on the Muse Spark family of models, which Meta introduced in April, and it can already shop with retailers, send emails, and control apps on a Mac.

The launch is part of Meta’s heavy spending on AI, which includes its Hyperion data centre in Louisiana.

Voice conversations will come next to Meta’s AI glasses and to Muse Charm, a small clip-on device the company showed at Connect. Meta has not yet given a date for either.