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Zuckerberg's New Narrative: From the Metaverse to Personal Superintelligence

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Muse provides AI capabilities, with glasses as the primary entry point, VR covering high-end entertainment, and Charm filling in scenarios where glasses are not worn.

Original title: "Meta No Longer Talks About the Metaverse, Keyword Changed to 'Personal Superintelligence'"
Original author: APPSO

At the 2026 Meta Connect conference, the metaverse went "invisible," and personal superintelligence became the absolute protagonist.

On September 23 local time in the United States, Meta held its annual Connect developer conference in Menlo Park, California. "We believe that the highest mission of superintelligence is to create and invent," CEO Zuckerberg said at the opening.

Zuckerberg also called Muse the "core" of Meta's future AI vision, and Reality Labs is shifting its focus toward building terminal devices for personal superintelligence.

Another major highlight is glasses. This time Meta has drawn clearer divisions between its different product lines: the $349 Ray-Ban Meta Audio has no camera, focusing on listening to music, calls, and voice interaction, with a maximum battery life of 12 hours, aiming to make people willing to wear it all day; the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta, starting at $449, retains the camera and upgrades shooting, noise reduction, and battery life. The existing Ray-Ban Display glasses with a screen add features such as navigation and are expanding into more sales markets.

Meta is also adding more frame styles and collaboration editions, and is expected to offer more than 100 glasses options by the end of the year.

The higher-end Meta VR Glasses are another product line: it puts computing and battery into an external device, reducing the weight of the glasses themselves to about 100 grams, targeting movie watching, immersive events, and multi-screen office work. Priced at $1,299.99, it is planned to launch in spring 2027.

Muse will connect to these AI glasses in the future, allowing users to assign tasks through voice and what they see in front of them.

This is a story that every consumer hardware terminal company in this era wants to tell: having its own powerful agent that can enter phones, computers, and extend to all wearable devices.

For Meta, glasses are the key device that allows Muse to continuously perceive the user's context and provide help when needed, and they also give it the opportunity to build its own computing entry point. The challenge is whether users are willing to wear them for long periods, trust them to handle what they see and private information, and whether Muse can provide sufficiently useful services to make glasses a device used every day.

Personal Superintelligence Muse

Just weeks after Muse's launch, Zuckerberg has already set a remarkably high ambition: in the coming years, Muse will grow into a personal superintelligence, helping billions of people worldwide achieve their goals and improve their lives.

Muse already serves millions of users and has just launched in the Canadian market, with more countries to follow.

On the technical architecture front, each Muse has its own private and secure computing environment, which Meta calls the Muse Secure Virtual Machine. The underlying model is Muse Spark, specifically trained for personal agents.

Compared with traditional chatbots, Muse emphasizes continuous task execution. Users can set goals, and Muse proactively provides information and generates customized feeds, while also supporting role and personality customization, with the default persona named Jolly.

The business model is also different. Meta's vision is not to charge users heavily for tokens directly, but to offer free usage within a certain quota, letting Muse create value by helping users save money, earn money, and complete transactions, then taking a small fee from those related transactions.

A familiar internet advertising playbook, but whether this model can hold up still depends on whether Muse can truly insert itself into users' daily decisions and transactions, and how large its active user base can become. The cases Meta has disclosed so far cover shopping, travel, bills, insurance, and other scenarios. For example, Muse once helped a user find a matching replacement for a shattered porcelain piece, and someone also used Muse to negotiate with a cable company, reducing their monthly bill by $85.

In his speech, Zuckerberg worked hard to convince the audience that Meta has experienced what it is like when a product enters a high-growth phase, and that Muse is currently in exactly that phase.

At this Connect conference, Muse announced several new key capabilities.

The first is computer use capability on Mac. After user authorization, Muse can operate applications on a Mac to complete tasks such as running a small business or handling work. Even after the user leaves the computer, it can continue executing previously assigned tasks. The Muse Mac app was launched last week, along with new dictation capabilities.

Email functionality is also in development. Users can add Muse to email threads or forward emails to Muse for it to handle on their behalf.

Connectors are an important foundation for Muse's extensibility. Muse had previously integrated with services such as Spotify, OpenTable, Plaid, and Ticketmaster. This time, it added retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, and Wayfair, travel services such as Expedia, and grocery delivery platforms such as Instacart.

In work scenarios, newly added connectors include Box, GitHub, Granola, and Notion. Meta has also partnered with Stripe and Shopify. Muse can access Shopify product catalogs and complete online purchases through Link and Shop Pay, with PayPal payment support also gradually expanding.

More importantly, Meta has begun opening up the Muse connector platform. Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang described it in his speech as an opportunity emerging during the formation of a new platform. He also announced that Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) is building models for personal agents from scratch, with a focus on optimizing capabilities such as preference memory, personalized actions, long-term continuity, tool selection, and cross-app operations.

Meta also revealed that it is about to release its most powerful model to date, using it to drive capability improvements across the entire model family.

A Massive Glasses Product Line

At this Connect, Meta essentially reorganized its entire glasses product line.

Zuckerberg believes that about 2 billion people worldwide wear glasses, and a significant portion of them will upgrade to AI glasses in the future. Compared with phones, glasses can continuously see what users see, hear what users hear, and become the entry point for Muse to connect with the real world.

Meta first introduced a new audio glasses category. Because they have no camera, these products can adopt more traditional glasses designs while further reducing weight and thickness and offering all-day battery life. In this category, Meta launched the thinnest Ray-Ban Meta to date and added the classic Ray-Ban Clubmaster style.

Ray-Ban Meta's third generation further narrows the frame and temples, adds adjustable temple tips, upgrades battery and capture capabilities in tandem, increases microphones to six, and supports Dolby Atmos spatial audio capture.

Meta brand glasses have expanded from dozens of combinations in June of this year to 51, with a starting price of $249, and new designs including Adventurer, Capri, and Nova.

Collaboration products are also increasing. Meta previously launched the Kylie collaboration, and this time announced a collaboration with Lisa. The product adds Lisa's signature star element to the temple tips, each pair comes with a charm inspired by her pets and a custom glasses case, and the app will also offer Lisa World designs and virtual try-on features.

Ray-Ban Display glasses are also beginning to expand sales. These are Meta's first glasses equipped with a full-color high-resolution display, and also the first product paired with the Meta neural wristband. After being out of stock for a long time a year after launch, supply will now be restored, sold through Meta.com, and also entering the international market.

By the end of this year, Meta expects to offer more than 100 glasses styles, covering multiple product lines including audio glasses, display glasses, Ray-Ban, and Oakley.

Hearing enhancement is also an important feature of this update. Meta glasses will offer hearing enhancement capabilities and are planned to be FDA-approved over-the-counter hearing aids for compensating for mild to moderate hearing loss. Users can complete a hearing assessment through the app and then adjust the amplification effect. Meta says about one in six adults in the United States has some degree of hearing loss, but factors such as the price and size of traditional hearing aids have affected some users' willingness to wear them.

The AI experience will also be upgraded. In the coming weeks, users can directly call Muse, which will retain the full conversation context and continue executing tasks in the background, while also supporting custom voice, speaking rate, and accent.

100 grams, $1,299, Meta VR glasses to ship in spring

The most significant hardware at this Connect is the Meta VR glasses.

Zuckerberg stated that Reality Labs is currently focusing more attention on Muse and AI glasses, and traditional VR devices will only see new releases when there are clear breakthroughs. This device is one such breakthrough. It adopts a glasses form factor rather than a traditional headset, with a facial weight of about 100 grams, less than one-fifth of the Quest 3. The device features a split architecture and is equipped with Meta's most advanced display system to date.

AI is another core capability of this device. For the first time, Meta has integrated AI agents directly into the operating system, allowing users to complete operations through voice, eyes, and gestures, and also convert a flat desktop into a virtual keyboard and touchpad.

The product primarily covers three scenarios: private cinema, multi-monitor computers, and gaming consoles.

In terms of audio and video, it is the first VR device to receive IMAX Enhanced certification, supporting Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Platforms such as Disney, Peacock, Paramount, and HBO Max will provide new 3D or VR content, while YouTube, Prime Video, and Crunchyroll offer 2D streaming.

In sports, Meta plans to provide over 100 immersive live events annually and has partnered with ESPN to offer front-row 180-degree views for select games, starting with college football this fall.

In gaming, it supports 75 gesture-only games at launch, is compatible with the Quest game library, and can also access hundreds of Xbox cloud games.

In office scenarios, the AI assistant can directly handle tasks such as drawing updates, hardware version merging, material rendering, and calendar management. The device also supports connecting to DisplayPort external display sources via USB-C.

Meta also demonstrated features such as mixed reality agents and holographic calls. Holographic calls will also be extended to Ray-Ban Display glasses in the future.

The Meta VR glasses are priced at $1,299 and are scheduled to ship next spring.

Meta's One More Thing

At the end of the conference, Meta unveiled a small AI hardware device called Muse Charm, which can fit in a pocket or be attached to a keychain. For users who do not wear glasses, Muse Charm provides a standalone entry point to access Muse, and can also help Muse perceive the user's surrounding environment.

Currently, Muse Charm is still in the prototype stage. Meta is still finalizing the surface materials and internal component layout, and plans to ship it before the December holiday season this year. Foreign media reports claim that the project was originally planned for launch in 2027, and Zuckerberg pushed the team to move the target up to this year's holiday season. For Meta, Charm is a rather toy-like experiment: turning an agent capable of handling daily tasks into a portable character you can pick up and talk to at any time.

Inside its roughly 2-inch OLED touchscreen lives Muse, whose appearance and voice users can customize; a light tap on the fingerprint sensor at the corner of the device allows direct conversation with it. Charm is led by former Apple interface design chief Alan Dye and designer Billy Sorrentino. Its translucent casing makes the circuits on the back and sides clearly visible; it is also equipped with 5G and front and rear cameras, allowing Muse to still respond when away from Wi-Fi and to obtain information in front of the user.

Judging from the products released at this Connect, personal superintelligence has become the absolute main thread. Muse is responsible for providing AI capabilities, glasses become the main entry point, VR glasses cover higher-end computing and entertainment needs, and Muse Charm supplements usage scenarios when glasses are not worn. The blueprint has largely been drawn. Hopefully personal superintelligence will not be the second metaverse.