Meta says Muse was heavily inspired by OpenClaw
Meta says Muse was built from scratch, while acknowledging inspiration from OpenClaw, including reported similarities in workspace filenames and SOUL.md content.
Meta product chief Nat Friedman has acknowledged that the company’s Muse AI assistant was “definitely heavily inspired” by OpenClaw, an open-source project created by Peter Steinberger.
Friedman said in a post on X that Muse was nevertheless “built from scratch”. He said Meta’s team had embraced OpenClaw and wanted Muse to offer similar functionality in a form that could be made safe, secure and scalable to billions of people.
The acknowledgement followed comparisons by users between the two assistants. TechCrunch reported that Muse uses workspace filenames associated with OpenClaw and includes a SOUL.md file whose content users described as nearly identical. The file defines an AI agent’s personality, communication style, values and behavioural boundaries.
Asked why Muse used the same filenames and closely matching SOUL.md content, Friedman did not dispute the comparisons. He said the team believed Steinberger had “got those things exactly right”.
The supplied reporting does not establish whether any OpenClaw code was copied. Meta referred TechCrunch to Friedman’s statement and said it had nothing further to add.
Muse launched earlier in September as a secure, private personal AI agent capable of shopping and sending emails. It recently reached No. 1 on the US App Store, while Amazon reportedly blocked it from the company’s site on 21 September, citing unauthorised access.
