Hustler Words – The tech world is abuzz with revelations concerning Meta’s highly anticipated AI assistant, Muse. After weeks of intense speculation among early adopters, Meta has officially acknowledged that its new product draws significant inspiration from the acclaimed open-source project, OpenClaw. This admission, while clarifying some mysteries, also casts a spotlight on Meta’s long-standing strategy of leveraging successful external innovations.
Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs (MSL) and former GitHub CEO, took to X to address the growing chatter. He unequivocally stated that Muse was "definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw." However, Friedman was quick to add a crucial distinction: Muse itself was "built from scratch," emphasizing that while the concept was borrowed, the underlying engineering was Meta’s own.
This strategic maneuver aligns with Meta’s well-documented playbook, which often involves identifying promising products and integrating their most compelling features into its own ecosystem – a tactic famously employed with the "Stories" format pioneered by Snapchat. Friedman, who joined Meta last year alongside Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, shared that the MSL team developed a profound appreciation for OpenClaw, fueling their ambition to create a similar, scalable AI agent capable of reaching billions. Given OpenClaw’s open-source nature and its meteoric rise, culminating in its creator’s acquisition by OpenAI earlier this year, it stands as a logical wellspring of inspiration.
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The controversy intensified following a viral X post by AI app co-founder Ansh Nanda, who provocatively declared, "Muse is LITERALLY OpenClaw for normies." Nanda’s post included a compelling screenshot of a conversation with Muse itself, where the AI agent conceded that the similarity between its system files and OpenClaw’s was not merely "a coincidence" but "a match."
This initial discovery prompted a flurry of independent investigations across social media. Users swiftly uncovered further evidence, including the presence of an identical SOUL.md file in both assistants. This plain text configuration file, written in Markdown, is critical for defining an AI agent’s personality, communication style, values, and behavioral boundaries. Critically, not only were the file names identical, but their content was also found to be almost entirely the same.
When pressed on these specific findings – the exact duplication of file names and the "nearly identical content" of the SOUL.md file – Friedman offered a candid explanation. Rather than disputing the claims, he simply replied that the Meta team believed Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw’s creator, "got those things exactly right." Friedman further elaborated on his admiration, hailing Steinberger as a "genius" whose "harness was pioneering from the jump." He recounted how, after personally experiencing OpenClaw in January, he purchased hundreds of Mac minis for the MSL team, fostering a deep appreciation for personal AI agents within the lab.
Meta’s overarching goal with Muse, according to Friedman, was to construct an OpenClaw-like product that could be made "safe and secure and easy to use and scale to billions of people." Despite the ongoing discourse regarding its origins, Muse has already achieved significant traction, recently climbing to the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store. Data suggests its launch performance is currently outpacing that of ChatGPT when comparing platform and market availability directly.
A Meta spokesperson, when contacted by Hustler Words for additional comment, referred back to Friedman’s public statements, indicating that the company had nothing further to add.
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