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  4. It’s sinister that Meta’s Muse AI mascot is so cute
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Agents & Products

It’s sinister that Meta’s Muse AI mascot is so cute

The fireman outfit. Dead. | Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge This is Optimizer, a weekly newsletter sent from Verge senior reviewer Victoria Song that dissects and discusses the latest gizmos and potions that swear they're going to change your life. Opt in for Optimizer here. Last night, I asked Blorbo - what I named my Muse AI agent - to help me set some health goals. I was underwhelmed. I'd asked for a workout regimen for a sub-30 minute 5K and regaining lost muscle. It gen

Get smart on it

Meta has created an AI mascot character called Jolly that will appear across its smart glasses and a new wearable device called Charm. The mascot is intentionally designed to be extremely cute, with a round face and adorable outfits, which the author argues makes people more willing to share personal information and trust the AI agent with details about their health, productivity, and relationships. The cuteness functions as a powerful tool to make people more comfortable with Meta's plan to embed AI agents into multiple products and integrate them into daily life. This raises concerns about whether the appealing design is being used to make consumers less cautious about the extent to which they're sharing data and relying on Meta's AI systems.

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Apple is racing to make Siri more agentic

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says CEO John Ternus is pressuring AI czar Craig Federighi to accelerate the Siri roadmap and deliver a powerful AI agent that can compete with OpenAI's Dots or Meta's Muse. While Federighi has delivered a functional version of Siri AI on an incredibly short timeline, the company has no illusions that it's keeping pace with its rivals. Two significant improvements are expected to be made to Siri in the coming months. One will give the assistant fine-grai

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World Models Will Soon Be Inescapable. Here’s What You Need to Know

Moving AI from text to 3D space, world models simulate real-world physics to teach robots and autonomous cars how to navigate reality.

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Perplexity launches its own take on AI agents for work

Perplexity is taking on OpenAI and Anthropic with its own work-focused AI agents. The startup's new always-on "Teammates" can take on multiple roles within a workspace, while pulling existing projects, skills, and memory from the Perplexity tools you already use. Teammates integrate with Perplexity Computer, an AI system that can deploy agents on your device to complete tasks. But Perplexity says Teammates "build on top" of Computer by offering the ability to collaborate and co

Also reported by The Decoder

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Airbnb says it’s launching an AI travel agent in the first half of 2027

Airbnb says its upcoming AI agent will help travelers plan trips, compare options, manage bookings, and get assistance throughout their stay.

Also reported by The Verge

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Uber only fulfilled 4 rides from AI agents last quarter

AI agents won't be stealing Uber's lunch any time soon. Only four rides were arranged by third-party AI agents during the third quarter of 2026, Uber executives disclosed during an earnings call this morning. The volume of Uber Eats orders fulfilled by AI agents was a little higher, with the company recording "around 500" during the week of Halloween, out of a total 320 million Uber rides and Uber Eats deliveries. This is the first time that Uber has disclosed the number of t

Also reported by TechCrunch

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Ramp data shows AI spending stalling just as Anthropic nears its IPO

AI usage keeps climbing, but spending has stalled. Price cuts and smarter cost controls among the biggest spenders could challenge investor assumptions about AI hypergrowth.