Meta’s Muse Surges Past ChatGPT in Its First 12 Days

Meta’s dedicated artificial intelligence application, Muse, recorded 1.8 million iOS downloads across the United States and Canada during its first 12 days of availability, according to data compiled by mobile intelligence firm Apptopia. ChatGPT generated 1.3 million downloads in the same two countries during its initial 12-day window after its mobile debut.

Muse reached the No. 1 overall ranking on the U.S. Apple App Store after debuting at No. 2, moving ahead of ChatGPT on the charts. Analytics provider Appfigures separately verified that Muse crossed the 1 million download threshold shortly after release.

Meta restricted Muse’s initial access to users in the United States and Canada, but launched it simultaneously on Apple’s App Store and Google Play. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to mobile devices in May 2023 as an iOS-only application and expanded it to Android devices in July 2023.

Across both major app stores in the U.S. and Canadian markets, Muse reached 2.8 million total downloads during its first 12 days. On U.S. iOS devices alone, it averaged 359,000 daily active users during that period, compared with 231,000 daily active users for ChatGPT during its comparable rollout timeframe.

Meta has integrated Muse’s infrastructure with its core network, enabling the standalone AI assistant to connect directly with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. More than 95% of Muse users are active Facebook users, while 63% maintain active Instagram accounts, according to Apptopia’s audience telemetry.

When Android users are included, Muse’s U.S. daily active user base reached 642,000 over the 12-day period. Meta previously used a similar ecosystem-driven distribution model for its microblogging platform, Threads, in July 2023, leveraging Instagram’s account infrastructure to scale the service past 500 million users.

The mobile launch comes as major technology companies accelerate consumer-facing deployments of generative AI tools. OpenAI established an early lead in consumer mindshare after ChatGPT’s web launch in late 2022, while Meta has invested billions of dollars in AI infrastructure and its open-weight Llama model series. Meta has also embedded conversational assistants directly into its core products alongside the standalone Muse app.

Apptopia and Appfigures provided third-party market estimates based on mobile telemetry and store rankings. Meta has not published verified internal user numbers for Muse, and the company did not immediately provide comment on the third-party figures.