Meta admits Muse's likeness to OpenClaw isn't a coincidence | TechCrunch

Meta's new AI assistant Muse is heavily based on OpenClaw, an open-source project that gained traction earlier this year. When users started noticing that Muse's system files matched OpenClaw's almost exactly — including identical file names and nearly identical content in a configuration file called SOUL.md that defines an AI agent's personality and behavior — Meta didn't deny it. Instead, Nat Friedman, head of product at Meta's Superintelligence Labs, admitted on X that Muse was "definitely heavily inspired as a product by OpenClaw," though he insisted the team "built it from scratch." He explained that after using OpenClaw in January, he bought hundreds of Mac minis for his team because they fell in love with how the tool worked. When pressed about why Muse copied OpenClaw's exact file names and had nearly identical SOUL.md content, Friedman simply said Meta thought OpenClaw's creator Peter Steinberger "got those things exactly right." This is a pretty candid admission — Meta isn't claiming independent innovation here, just that they borrowed what worked and then scaled it. Friedman acknowledged Steinberger as a genius and described Muse's goal as building "something like OpenClaw that we could make safe and secure and easy to use and scale to billions of people." The approach mirrors Meta's well-established pattern of taking successful features from other platforms, most famously copying Snapchat's stories format. Muse has hit number one on the U.S. App Store and is outpacing ChatGPT's launch when you account for platform and market differences. OpenAI hired Steinberger earlier this year after OpenClaw's breakout success, so Meta's move to build a consumer-friendly version based on his work is strategic — they get the proven architecture while avoiding the need to poach the original creator. Meta declined to add anything beyond Friedman's statement when asked for comment.