Meta acknowledges Muse's resemblance to OpenClaw is intentional
Meta product lead Nat Friedman has confirmed that its new AI assistant Muse was heavily inspired by open-source project OpenClaw, though the company maintains it was built from scratch. The admission followed users noticing striking similarities between the two systems' files.
Meta has confirmed that its new AI assistant, Muse, was heavily inspired by the popular open-source project OpenClaw. The acknowledgment came from Nat Friedman, former GitHub CEO who now leads product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs (MSL), in a post on X.
Friedman said that while Muse was "built from scratch," it was "definitely heavily inspired as a product" by OpenClaw. He revealed that after trying OpenClaw in January, he purchased hundreds of Mac minis for the MSL team, and many staff members fell in love with using OpenClaw and similar personal AI agents.
Users spotted the similarities
The discussion took off after AI app co-founder Ansh Nanda posted that Muse was "literally OpenClaw for normies." Nanda shared a conversation in which the Muse agent itself acknowledged that the resemblance between its system files and OpenClaw's wasn't a coincidence but a match.
Other users pointed out that Muse uses the same SOUL.md file as OpenClaw — a plain-text configuration file that defines an AI agent's personality, communication style, values, and behavioral boundaries. Another noted that the files weren't just named identically between the two systems but contained nearly identical content.
Asked why Muse had copied the exact file names and produced near-identical SOUL.md content, Friedman replied that the Meta team believed OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger had "gotten those things exactly right." Friedman called Steinberger a genius whose approach was pioneering from the start.
A Meta spokesperson, when contacted by TechCrunch, pointed to Friedman's statement and said the company had nothing further to add. Muse has recently reached No. 1 on the U.S. App Store, with data suggesting its growth is outpacing ChatGPT's original launch when comparable market conditions are considered.
