Meta pushes into personal AI agents as company faces public reckoning over privacy and safety

Meta introduced its AI personal agent app on Tuesday and is asking a subset of users to pay at a time when the company and broader artificial intelligence industry face intensifying scrutiny and public skepticism.

The app, which was given the internal code name Hatch, is powered by the Muse Spark family of foundation models that Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang has been debuting at a breakneck pace since April.

Meta said the Muse app lets people offload digital tasks like booking appointments, filling out electronic forms and even monitoring home security camera feeds to AI-powered assistants. The company designed the app so "it feels very approachable and friendly and explainable, and it doesn't feel too complicated," Wang told CNBC in an interview.

"Behind the scenes, Muse might be doing very advanced coding workflows, or building sophisticated integrations, or doing quite a lot of heavy lifting while keeping that very sort of simple for the user," Wang said.