Meta’s new AI assistant, Muse, has sparked discussions among early users and developers about its similarities to OpenClaw, an open-source AI project. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs (MSL), confirmed on X that Muse was “definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw,” though he emphasized that the AI was “built from scratch.” Friedman, who previously led GitHub and joined Meta last year, said the team was so impressed by OpenClaw that they wanted to create a version that could be used by billions of people. OpenClaw gained attention earlier this year, leading to its creator being hired by OpenAI. Friedman’s comments came in response to a viral X post by Ansh Nanda, co-founder of an AI app, who claimed that Muse was essentially “OpenClaw for normies.” Nanda shared a conversation with Muse that suggested the AI agent recognized similarities between its own system files and those of OpenClaw, calling the match “not just a coincidence.” The post quickly gained traction as others shared their own observations, noting that Muse used the same file names and even had a SOUL.md file, a plain text configuration file that defines an AI agent’s personality, tone, and values. One user pointed out that not only were the file names the same, but the content was nearly identical. When asked about these similarities, Friedman did not dispute the claims but instead praised the creator of OpenClaw, Peter Steinberger, saying he had “got those things exactly right.” Friedman explained that after using OpenClaw in January, he purchased hundreds of Mac minis for the MSL team, and many members fell in love with the tool. He described Steinberger’s work as pioneering and said Muse was designed to be a safer, more user-friendly version of OpenClaw that could be scaled globally. Muse has been a significant success since its launch, recently reaching the top of the U.S. App Store. Data suggests it is outperforming ChatGPT in terms of user growth and market availability. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the company had no further comments beyond what Friedman had already shared on X.