I was in the audience at Meta’s Connect conference in late September when Mark Zuckerberg held up a pendant in his hands and surprise announced the Muse Charm, a little novelty-like device with Meta’s disarmingly adorable Muse AI agent onboard. Muse Charm is coming as soon as December this year.
But the funny thing is, while most people called it an AI Tamagotchi, all I saw was a strapless Apple Watch. Is that what the Muse Charm could be, eventually? A watch as well as a pendant? Is this Meta’s entry to wrist wearables in disguise? I’m still thinking about it…because smartwatches are also on their way to being AI assistants soon, too.
Reports of Meta working on its own watch wearable have been cooking for several years now. At Connect, there were smart glasses galore and even a new glasses-like VR headset coming next year. But things were suspiciously quiet on the wrist wearables front.
Meta already has one wrist wearable, the neural band that comes with the Ray-Ban Display glasses. But it received no hardware updates this year, which surprised me. The sensor-studded band uses electromyography, or EMG, to measure skin-contact electrical signals for a set of gesture controls to navigate the heads-up glasses display. Meta’s already ambitiously promised that EMG could open up all sorts of neural input possibilities, even testing the tech in a smart car dashboard prototype.
As far back as last year, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth told me that some sort of display or watch-like evolution of the neural band could be in the works next. And Meta already introduced a partnership with Garmin to link fitness tracking to smart glasses last year.
AI agents as Meta’s new priority
The Muse Charm, however, brings a different piece of the puzzle to the table. Muse AI is Meta’s biggest priority now, clearly, based on its widespread availability on desktops and smartphones and on the company’s intentions to put the new agentic AI on all its smart glasses and, eventually, Meta’s VR Glasses. And where else could Muse work well? Enter the Charm.
The Charm has another watch-like tell. It’s powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear Elite chipset, which already runs on Samsung’s latest smartwatches. The Wear Elite, as I learned from Qualcomm earlier this year, is optimized for a range of AI-ready wearables, ranging from watches to pendants to even glasses. There’s no reason why Meta’s Charm couldn’t easily get a wrist strap…and a watch OS to go with it.
Meta’s neural band doesn’t have a screen yet. Would it ever fuse with Muse Charm?Celso Bulgatti/CNET
Many reasons for a Meta smartwatch
A smartwatch would benefit Meta on several fronts. Clearly, the company wants to keep breaking into lifestyle wearables, and watches could offer another way onto people besides faces. Fitness and health tracking would give Meta data that Muse and its smart glasses could use. And watches are a key part of the glasses interface’s future. Google’s glasses will work with Wear OS watches soon. Apple’s rumored glasses will likely work with Apple Watches.
And Meta has to find a better way to make its neural band more wearable. I find the first-gen neural band fascinating in theory, but an annoying extra thing to charge in practice. If it doesn’t become a watch, or at least a fitness tracker, why wear it at all? The neural band doesn’t even control anything other than Meta’s one line of display glasses right now, but chances are Meta’s going to try to figure out ways it could work with the rest of its smart glasses lineup, and VR too.
Last year I felt like Meta’s neural band felt naked without a watch display (Apple Watch on left, Meta Neural Band on right).Scott Stein/CNET
Google and Apple are already showing how quickly smartwatches are becoming more like AI companions. Gemini lives on Wear OS watches. Apple’s adding memory-assisting audio intelligence modes to its new watches later this fall. Both can tap into Gemini and the new Siri, respectively.
Meta has Muse now. And a charm by the end of the year. Is the watch after that? Meta didn’t have any comment on the topic when I reached out to ask, but I think we’re seeing the beta test in action right in front of our eyes. Or is this the pivot to a modular idea that could be a pendant and a wristworn device, without committing to either?
One thing’s clear, no matter what: Meta’s looking for ways for that disarmingly adorable Muse mascot to be with us all the time, even without glasses. And the Charm looks like the experiment.
Scott Stein
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