Meta Confirms Muse Was Heavily Inspired by OpenClaw

Meta has acknowledged that its consumer AI assistant, Muse, draws significant inspiration from the open-source project OpenClaw, validating long-held suspicions among early users. Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs (MSL), confirmed via an X post that while the application was engineered from the ground up, its design philosophy was deeply influenced by OpenClaw.

The admission follows a viral thread started by AI app co-founder Ansh Nanda, who claimed that “Muse is LITERALLY OpenClaw for normies.” Nanda’s assertion gained traction after a conversation with Muse itself revealed that similarities between the two systems’ internal files were not coincidental but rather intentional matches.

Users soon identified that Muse utilized a SOUL.md configuration file—a plain text Markdown file defining an agent’s personality and behavioral boundaries—bearing both the same filename and nearly identical content to that of OpenClaw. When pressed on why these specific file names and contents were replicated, Friedman did not dispute the findings. Instead, he praised OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger, stating, “We thought that Peter got those things exactly right.”​

Friedman, who joined Meta last year alongside Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, revealed that after adopting OpenClaw in January, he purchased hundreds of Mac minis for his team, many of whom developed a strong affinity for the personal agent. “Our goal with Muse was to build something like OpenClaw that we could make safe and secure and easy to use and scale to billions of people,” he wrote.

The statement underscores Meta’s historical approach to product development, which often involves identifying successful features from emerging platforms and integrating them into broader offerings—a strategy previously notable in its adaptation of Snapchat’s stories feature. OpenClaw’s breakout success, which led to OpenAI acquiring its creator earlier this year, further highlighted its impact on the industry.

Muse has seen considerable commercial success, recently topping the U.S. App Store charts. Comparative data suggests the app is outpacing ChatGPT’s launch metrics when accounting for differences in platform availability. A Meta spokesperson declined to provide additional comment beyond Friedman’s statement.