Meta Adds Real-Time Voice Conversations and Animated Avatars to Muse Assistant

Meta has updated its Muse personal artificial intelligence assistant with real-time spoken conversations and responsive animated avatars, allowing users to talk directly with the agent rather than typing prompts.

As reported by The Next Web (https://thenextweb.com/news/meta-muse-ai-voice-chat-animated-avatars), the feature is currently available only to users in the United States across mobile devices, web browsers, and macOS. Users initiate a voice session by selecting a telephone icon in the top-right corner of the interface. The interface supports conversational interruptions, enabling callers to cut in while Muse is speaking and receive immediate replies. Meta also structured the tool to execute background workflows during an ongoing call, such as managing background tasks while a user is walking.

Alongside audio interactions, the system generates an animated avatar designed to reflect facial expressions and physical gestures that match the conversational tone. The avatar reacts visually even while the user is mid-sentence. Meta provides several layout options, allowing people to hide the avatar for voice-only mode, display it alongside the text thread, or expand it to full screen. The software includes hundreds of voice profiles with differing personalities, and Meta stated at its Connect conference that users will eventually be able to customize vocal cadences and accents through natural language descriptions. Meta suggested typical use cases such as brainstorming, trip planning, and rehearsing for presentations or job interviews.

The visual rendering runs on Muse Realtime Avatar, a dedicated model developed by Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company's core AI research division. Meta first previewed the system in September at Connect. While internal evaluations cited by Meta indicated that test raters preferred its animated avatars to commercial alternatives from Runway and HeyGen, the company noted that not all stage demonstrations directly match the versions running inside the consumer application.

Muse initially debuted in September as Meta's direct competitor to AI assistants like OpenAI's ChatGPT. The software is powered by the Muse Spark model family introduced in April and can already conduct web commerce, draft emails, and control desktop applications on Mac systems. The rollout aligns with Meta's aggressive capital expenditures in AI infrastructure, including its Hyperion data center project in Louisiana. Meta plans to expand Muse voice interactions to hardware form factors, including its smart glasses and the upcoming Muse Charm clip-on device, though deployment timelines have not been announced.