The race for AI personal assistants heats up with new releases from OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Meta, and Apple

Startups and tech giants are competing in a new market: that of permanent digital agents who know a user’s life and act on their behalf, rather than just answering questions. Companies such as SpaceXAI, Meta, Apple, and now OpenAI are launching or revamping their assistants to become each person’s default agent before a competitor gets there first.

What each company offers

• Grok Bot (SpaceXAI): Launched in August by Elon Musk, Grok Bot creates customizable “teammates” that run on a dedicated cloud computer shared among all agents on the same account. They can access websites and apps as if they were a person, even without an official connector, and continue working after the user closes the laptop, resuming only when a decision requires human approval. Multiple agents can participate in the same group conversation to divide tasks. Initial access was restricted to subscribers of SuperGrok Heavy and Cursor, a programming platform with AI acquired by SpaceXAI.
• Muse (Meta): Launched in September, Muse allows users to name the agent, create a custom avatar, and delegate tasks such as sending emails, booking travel, filling out forms, negotiating prices, and monitoring home security cameras. It operates in an isolated virtual machine in Meta’s cloud, with a permission system called Sentinel that approves or blocks sensitive actions—the company guarantees that the agent never sees real passwords or card data. There is a free tier and two paid plans, at $20 and $100 per month, intended to cover the computational cost of more intensive use.
• Siri with AI (Apple): Announced in June and in beta from September, the new Siri is a complete rebuild of the assistant. It can now understand content displayed on the screen, search for personal information in messages, emails, and photos, and access the internet to obtain updated data. Unlike competitors, Apple keeps some of the processing on the device itself, using a privacy architecture called Private Cloud Compute for tasks that require a server.
• OpenAI: In February, the company hired Austrian Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, an open-source tool popular among advanced AI users for automating inboxes, reservations, and flight check-ins. According to CEO Sam Altman, Steinberger will lead OpenAI’s next generation of personal agents, while OpenClaw will continue to exist as an open-source project under a foundation supported by the company.

The fight is for control of personal data

The competition for the default personal assistant is also a battle over who holds users’ information. While previous frontier models competed on raw intelligence, personal agents win by becoming useful and deeply integrated into daily life: the more an agent knows about someone’s relationships, schedule, and spending, the more valuable it becomes.

Becoming the default agent can be one of the most valuable relationships in consumer technology, because people tend to share much more with an AI that manages their life than with a search engine. It is not yet clear, however, what price consumers will pay for this convenience, whether in money or in privacy.

Apple said that some server-based Apple Intelligence features, including the new Siri, will have daily usage limits, with expanded access possibly tied to a paid tier in the future. Meta, for its part, offers free and paid tiers of Muse, presenting the product as more privacy-conscious than its previous offerings. Users must manually disable the use of their interactions with Muse to train Meta’s models; otherwise, “critical personally identifiable information” is removed before conversations are used to improve AI.

Muse is based on the Muse Spark family of models, released at an accelerated pace by Meta’s AI chief, Alexandr Wang, since April. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has already told investors that he expects billions of people to have AI personal agents within five years—a bet that helps justify the more than $130 billion the company plans to invest in AI chips and infrastructure in 2026 alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is an AI personal agent? It is a digital assistant that knows a user’s information and performs tasks on their behalf, such as managing emails, making reservations, and filling out forms, without the need for constant supervision.
• What will OpenAI’s AI personal agent be? OpenAI has not yet released its personal agent, but has hired Peter Steinberger, creator of OpenClaw, to lead the development of the company’s next generation of personal agents.
• How does SpaceXAI’s Grok Bot work? Grok Bot provides agents that operate on a dedicated cloud computer, access websites and apps, and continue performing tasks after the user closes the laptop. Multiple agents can participate in the same conversation and divide the work among themselves.
• How much does Meta’s Muse cost and what does it do? Muse has a free tier and paid plans of $20 and $100 per month. The agent can send emails, book travel, fill out forms, negotiate prices, and monitor home cameras within a Meta virtual machine.
• How does Siri with AI protect personal data? The new Siri processes some tasks on the device itself and uses the Private Cloud Compute architecture when it needs to access servers. The assistant can also interpret the screen, search messages, emails, and photos, and retrieve updated information from the internet.
• Why do AI personal agents increase privacy concerns? Agents become more useful as they access data about relationships, schedules, spending, and other areas of a user’s life. To protect privacy, companies like Meta require users to manually disable the use of their interactions in model training, removing critical personal information before use.