What Muse Is and Isn't

Before you set anything up, be sure you're looking at the right product. Searches for "Muse" turn up several different things.

• Muse is Meta's personal AI agent, at muse.ai. It launched in the US on September 8, 2026 and was built by Meta Superintelligence Labs. This course is about Muse.
• The Meta AI app is a separate Meta product with its own terms. Settings you change in one don't apply to the other.
• Muse Spark is the model, meaning the underlying AI engine, that Muse runs on. You don't sign up for Muse Spark. You use Muse, and Muse uses Spark.
• Unrelated products share the name, such as Project MUSE (academic journals) and a website builder called Muse.

Here's why it matters on a production. Say your post supervisor forwards a "Muse setup guide" that turns out to describe the Meta AI app. You could switch off training in the wrong app and believe your notes are protected when they aren't. In this course, when a menu name or setting comes up, it refers to Muse at muse.ai and nothing else.

An AI agent is software that carries out tasks for you rather than only answering questions. Muse can search the web, fill in forms, draft and send email, and, with your approval, book or buy things. You'll use only a narrow part of that. In this course Muse won't send, sign, book or pay for anything.

Three features make it different from a chat window:

• Background goals. You give Muse a long-term aim, it builds a plan and keeps working after you close the app. It comes back when something changes or when it needs your approval.
• Memory. It remembers what you tell it (your role, your production, your preferences) and can make suggestions without being asked. You can tell it to forget things.
• Approvals. Before certain actions it shows an approval card that you accept or deny.

For example, a chatbot will tell you what a festival tracker might contain. An agent can build the tracker, check the official festival pages every week and remind you before each deadline. That's useful, and it's also why the rest of this module is about limits.

Muse doesn't run only on your phone. Each user gets a Muse Secure VM, a cloud computer of its own with a web browser, a file system and a terminal. Muse can write code and build small tools there for a task.

What it makes is often an Artifact: a document, PDF, web page or interactive output such as a tracker or checklist. A festival tracker or a draft call-sheet layout would be an Artifact.

To reach your other services it uses Connectors, which are links to apps such as Google Calendar, Gmail, Slack, Box and Dropbox. Once connected, Muse can read from them and, depending on your settings, act in them. On a Mac, the Muse app can also use local apps and files, which Meta calls computer use.

Each of these is a way in to your production's material, so each needs care. Later lessons set connectors to read-only where that's offered, limit Mac access to one project folder and keep Artifacts unshared. For now, just know that these parts exist.

This course gives Muse a clear job description. Ben Affleck, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who founded the AI tools company InterPositive, has said AI will fill in the parts of production that are "expensive and burdensome", and that it will always rest on human artistry. Here, that means the burden goes to the agent and the art stays with you.

Paperwork an agent can carry (as a first pass that a person then checks):

• A first-pass shooting schedule built from a scene list with no dialogue
• A list of scenes touched by new revision pages
• Permit research from official film-office pages
• Festival deadlines and reminders
• A notes list for one named cut

Calls that stay with people:

• Casting, performance and creative choices
• Which draft is the current script (the script supervisor confirms)
• Safety, availability and cost commitments
• Anything involving a performer's face, voice or consent

For example, Muse can point out that scene 42 needs the house keys on the porch rail and scene 44 has to match. Whether to add an insert or keep the take is a decision for the director and department heads.

Richard Chuang co-founded Pacific Data Images, which became part of DreamWorks Animation, and built the pipeline behind Shrek. He has described a studio asking him for a fully automatic pipeline that would update the script, the breakdown and the generated material on its own. He called his own sketch of it rough and warned against taking such a pipeline for granted.

This course takes that warning seriously. Every standing task you give Muse has edges:

1. What wakes it: a schedule, or an event such as new pages arriving.
2. What it may change: usually only a draft or a list of its own.
3. What it must never touch: the script, the cut, crew records, anything you send or pay for.
4. Whom it asks: the person who makes the call.

A stop point is a named moment when Muse has to pause and wait for a person. In the revision check you'll build later, if two drafts arrive and one has a newer date but older content, Muse stops and asks the script supervisor which is current. It doesn't guess. Stopping at the right moment counts as the task working.

Goal: make sure muse.ai is Meta's Muse before you enter anything.

You need: a browser on a computer or phone. Don't create an account yet. The next lessons cover a separate work account and turning training off before you start.

Steps:

1. Type muse.ai into the address bar yourself. Don't use a link from an email or a search ad.
2. Watch the address bar. Sign-in should pass through auth.muse.ai to a Meta login (you may see facebook.com).
3. Stop at the login screen and close the tab.

It worked if the login page is Meta's. The screen may look different from any description here, because Meta changes the app often. What matters is that the login is Meta's.

If it doesn't work:

• A login page that isn't Meta's isn't Muse. Close it.
• Unofficial WhatsApp numbers or links that claim to be Muse should be treated as scams.
• If Muse says it isn't available, check where it's offered (the next lesson covers this). Don't use a VPN or a foreign app-store account to get around the limit.