The First AI Mascot Beauty Contest Is On

Pick your AI mascot.

Muse or dots?

While half the world is worried about superintelligence and AI taking over humanity, apparently all the attention is now on… Tamagotchis.

Do Gen Z even know what a Tamagotchi is?

Anyway. Apparently the race to AGI is having its Pixar stage.

Meta has Muse. OpenAI now has dots. Cute little creatures with eyes, names and personalities — sitting on top of some seriously powerful models.

Which makes sense.

Now that the tech is getting there, the battle is for hearts.

And what better way to make an autonomous agent reading your emails, booking your travel and buying things for you feel less terrifying than turning it into a cosy little mascot?

Meta even put theirs on a keychain.

I still think that’s slightly stupid. Another thing to charge. Another thing to lose.

But I’m already wondering how much the Gucci jacket for my Muse will cost.

Because surely that’s next.

Skins. Clothes. Voices. Accessories. Limited editions. Maybe they level up. Maybe you unlock things.

We could be looking at an entirely new avatar economy — and a pretty obvious door into gamification.

Fortnite meets personal assistant.

The funny thing is that behind the googly eyes there is real technology.

Muse connects to your apps, gets its own email address, can shop and make payments, and Meta is bringing it to its AI glasses so it can act on what you’re actually looking at.

And the market seems to think this matters. Meta stock has climbed nearly 30% since the beginning of September, with Muse driving much of the excitement.

So perhaps Meta is already one step ahead.

The keychain may be a gimmick.

The glasses aren’t.

Meta is trying to ship its agent into the physical world — something sitting on your face, seeing what you see, available all day. Muse becomes less an app and more a layer between you and everything else.

OpenAI has dots: always-on agents that learn your preferences, work in the background and move across thousands of apps.

But where do they live?

And what happens next?

Apple has the iPhone, Watch and AirPods.

Google has Android, Gemini and its own glasses ambitions.

Amazon has Alexa.

Anthropic has Claude.

Everyone has increasingly capable AI.

Now everyone needs to figure out how to make it yours.

Which brings us back to the important question.

Muse or dots?

I’ll give Muse a try for now. But I can’t wait to see what Claude comes up with.