Booking a vacation sounds like one thing to hand off to an AI assistant, right up until it has to check the calendar, open a dozen tabs, and figure out whether the cheapest flight is still the cheapest once a carry-on is involved. Every one of those steps takes work, and when an AI agent is doing it, the cost can add up.

Meta has a new model built for that part of the job.

On Nov. 9, Meta's Superintelligence Labs introduced Muse Ember, which the company calls its smallest and most cost-efficient AI model yet. It's designed for the steps an agent might repeat dozens of times in a single assignment, like pulling details out of a document, calling another tool, or running a test after changing a line of code.

Muse is the app with the cute little avatar — named Jolly — that Meta has been promoting since September. The AI assistant can work across (some) apps with a user's permission. The app passed 5 million downloads in 22 days, and has already had many updates; last week, Meta started rolling out voice conversations and animated avatars for the assistant in the U.S.

Meta also uses the Muse name for a family of AI models. The company positions Muse Wonder as the model for its toughest problems and Muse Spark as a model for coding and other work that involves using tools. Ember is the cheaper option for repeatable tasks. Meta's pitch is that developers can use Wonder to plan a complicated job and hand off the individual steps to Ember.

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