Meta says Muse AI was inspired by OpenClaw, but built from scratch
Meta’s new AI assistant, Muse, has quickly become one of the most talked-about consumer AI apps, and early users believe they know why. Many have pointed out that Muse feels strikingly similar to OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent that gained major attention among developers and AI enthusiasts.
Now, Meta is acknowledging that the comparison is not entirely wrong.
Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, said in a post on X that Muse was “definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw.” However, he also stressed that Muse was not a direct copy of the software and was “built from scratch” by Meta’s team.
Friedman, who previously led GitHub before joining Meta alongside Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, explained that Meta’s AI team became enthusiastic about OpenClaw after using it earlier this year. According to him, many people inside Meta admired the way OpenClaw functioned as a personal AI agent and wanted to create a similar experience that could be made safe, secure, easy to use, and scalable for billions of users.
The discussion gained momentum after AI app co-founder Ansh Nanda posted on X that “Muse is LITERALLY OpenClaw for normies.” His post included a conversation with Muse in which the AI appeared to acknowledge similarities between its own system files and those used by OpenClaw.
That post quickly spread through the AI community, leading more users to compare the two assistants. Some pointed out that Muse appeared to use file names similar to OpenClaw’s workspace structure. Others highlighted a file called SOUL.md, a plain text configuration file commonly used to define an AI agent’s personality, tone, values, boundaries, communication style, and areas of expertise.
One user claimed that the similarities went beyond file names, saying the contents of some files were nearly identical. When Friedman was asked why Muse used the same file names and had similar content in the SOUL.md file, he did not deny the resemblance. Instead, he said Meta believed OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger “got those things exactly right.”
Friedman praised Steinberger’s work, calling him a genius and describing the OpenClaw framework as pioneering. He said Meta’s goal with Muse was not simply to recreate OpenClaw, but to build a polished AI assistant inspired by the same ideas while making it more accessible for mainstream users.
Muse has already made a major impact. The app recently reached the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store, signaling strong demand for consumer-friendly AI tools. Early data also suggests that Muse is growing quickly when compared with other major AI app launches under similar market conditions.
Meta has positioned Muse as a personal AI assistant designed for everyday users, not just developers or AI hobbyists. That may be a key reason for its fast rise. While OpenClaw earned attention as an open-source project with strong appeal among technical users, Muse appears aimed at a much broader audience.
The situation also reflects a familiar pattern in the tech industry: successful open-source ideas often influence commercial products. In this case, Meta is openly admitting that OpenClaw helped shape the direction of Muse, while maintaining that the final product was independently built.
For now, the debate around Muse and OpenClaw is only making the app more visible. Whether users see Muse as an inspired evolution or something too close to its open-source predecessor, one thing is clear: Meta’s AI assistant has captured public attention at exactly the right moment.
