Meta's chief AI officer says its Muse AI can save you $1,000 — I tried it myself and saved just $35

Not quite as useful for everyone

by · TechRadar

Features By Eric Hal Schwartz Published 24 September 2026

(Image credit: Shutterstock / Burlingham / Erlin Diah)

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Saving $1,000 sounded pretty good to me. I wasn't entirely sure where Meta's Muse AI was supposed to find it, but Meta's chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, and the #MuseMoneyChallenge sounded pretty encouraging about putting the company's new AI agent to work finding $1,000 in savings.

Some of the results shared so far make that target seem surprisingly plausible. People have reported finding cheaper insurance, forgotten subscriptions, and even unused gift cards, although many of the early examples highlighted around the challenge have come from Meta employees.

I decided to give it a try. I was not expecting Muse to discover a forgotten Swiss bank account, but $1,000 seemed like a sufficiently concrete, if unlikely, target. The results showed how impressive Muse can be, if you're willing to let it into your life.

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Muse is different from a conventional chatbot because it is designed to take action rather than simply tell you what you should do. Meta says it runs on its own secure virtual computer with a browser, can connect to services such as email and calendar, and can handle tasks including filling out forms and dealing with customer service. It can continue working after you close the app, although actions such as purchases and sending messages can require your approval.

That makes the money challenge more interesting than simply asking ChatGPT for tips on saving cash. Telling a chatbot to help me save $1,000 would probably produce an earnest lecture about meal planning and canceling streaming services. Muse can potentially go looking for the forgotten subscription itself.

I started broadly and told Muse I wanted it to find ways to save me money. Muse requires a little commitment from the user. The more useful you want an agent like this to be, the more access it needs to the places where useful information lives. Meta lets Muse connect to other apps and services, and says users control those permissions. The company also says login credentials are stored separately so the agent cannot read them, while sensitive actions can require approval.

Once I had given it enough to work with, Muse began looking for things that applied to me and surfaced possible actions. I already know that canceling services I do not use saves money. I do not need artificial intelligence to explain the revolutionary concept of paying fewer bills. What I wanted was something able to find the bills I have forgotten about.

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