Meta says US users can now video chat with their Muse AI avatar
THE SO WHAT
Letting an AI avatar take video calls is Meta testing whether people will accept agents as a social surface, not just a chat box. If you run consumer products, assume your users will soon expect branded agents that can show up on camera and carry a conversation across devices.
READ THE SOURCE
MORE FROM THE WIRE
Applied AIPartnering with Edelbyte: Data Infrastructure That Keeps Up With AI's Curiosity
If agents are going to hammer your internal systems with orders of magnitude more queries than humans ever did, the real constraint becomes data infra cost and latency, not model quality. Teams building agents should be budgeting for a new class of OLAP-style infra like Edelbyte’s, not assuming the existing warehouse can take the load.
Applied AIMeta adds real-time voice chat and animated avatars to its Muse app
Real-time voice plus reactive avatars turns Muse into a persistent, character-like presence rather than a text tool. If you build consumer experiences, plan for users to expect multimodal, always-on assistants that feel like entities, not chat boxes.
Applied AIExpedia CEO on Full-Year Forecast, Travel Demand and AI
Expedia is seeing resilient demand from affluent travelers while talking up AI, which means they’ll lean harder on personalization and dynamic pricing to defend margin as volume moderates. Travel operators should assume the big OTAs will capture more of the customer relationship through AI-driven trip planning and cross-sell.
Applied AIOmar Hamdi says AI will test whether PR firms can really scale
With UK spend on PR and management consulting falling to 4.2% while AI services surge, comms work is being treated as partially automatable. Agencies need to prove they can productize and scale outcomes—distribution, narrative, measurement—or watch budget migrate to in-house teams armed with AI tools.