ByteDance prepares Muse-like agent in push to close AI gap

ByteDance plans the release of a Muse-like AI assistant in the coming weeks to augment its lead in AI video, a milestone event the company hopes will help close the gap with top U.S. labs in as soon as three years.Speaking to its AI team in an all-hands meeting recently, co-founder Zhang Yiming told researchers, engineers and supporting staff about the plan and set out key priorities, according to people familiar with the matter. He sees ByteDance able to compete with leading industry names like Anthropic and OpenAI at the cutting edge, though he cautioned it would take until at least 2029 or 2030, the people said, asking not to be named as the meeting was private.The planned new artificial intelligence agent will serve a similar role to Muse, introduced by Meta Platforms this September. Muse has proven a big hit for its U.S. creator, consolidating Meta’s extensive AI research into a voice-based agent with an animated avatar that helps users with various tasks. Meta is distributing Muse across its hardware portfolio that includes various models of smart glasses and an upcoming Muse Charm gadget just for the agent. It’s unclear whether ByteDance also has plans for accompanying hardware.