Meta is facing criticism over the design of its Muse AI agent's mascot, a character named Jolly that youth advocates say strongly appeals to young children even though the product is restricted to users 18 and older. The cuddly figure can be dressed like a doll, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared with a furry Muse version wearing a toga and laurel wreath at a recent Meta Connect event. Meta plans to sell a Tamagotchi-style device for the Muse character later this year.
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts defended the design, saying people enjoy creating an avatar with personality and style because it is fun and brings them joy. He said Meta requires everyone using the Muse app to provide a date of birth, blocks people detected as possibly under 18 from creating an account, and runs additional checks to confirm users who claim to be adults are over 18. Mona Sarantakos, vice president of Product Management at Meta Superintelligence Labs, described the design process as leaning into delightful elements meant to feel less awkward than chatting with a corporate logo or entity.
Youth advocates are pushing back. Josh Golin, executive director at the nonprofit Fairplay, said the mascot looks like a Teletubby and is clearly a character that would appeal to very young children. He said people who study children's media understand that rounded shapes particularly appeal to preschoolers. Golin called the Tamagotchi-like Muse Charm device an inappropriate attempt by Meta to get young kids hooked on Muse, adding that families should say no and regulators should take a hard look.
Supporters and critics of the branding disagree on its intent. Julian De Freitas, an associate professor of marketing at Harvard who focuses on AI companions, said cute factors can make a product seem warm and less threatening, and that Meta faces a high bar because attitudes toward the company are quite negative after social addiction rulings. In August, Meta settled claims regarding social media addiction, agreeing to add restrictive features for teens on Instagram and Facebook and to pay out up to $16.7 billion.
Some experts compared the mascot to Japan's long history of using adorable characters to market technology and to earlier anthropomorphized AI assistants such as Microsoft's Clippy and the OpenClaw lobster. Jathan Sadowski, an associate professor with the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Australia's Monash University, said cute and frictionless design features and nostalgia for devices that did not constantly surveil people are sly ways to make users drop their guard, stop asking critical questions and become passive. He said agents like Muse try to convince users they are just a cute little guy in your pocket rather than an always-open portal into a major surveillance company's servers. Meta trains its AI models on Muse interactions unless users opt out.
Meta says it will release a confidential version of its virtual machine that helps power Muse later in 2026, an option that could cryptographically and verifiably prevent Meta from accessing a user's data. Ryan Calo, a professor at the University of Washington and faculty cofounder of its Tech Policy Lab, compared using agents to hiring a vacation tour guide, relying on an intermediary without necessarily knowing who is paying them.
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