ByteDance plans a Muse-like AI agent in the coming weeks

ByteDance plans to release an AI assistant modeled on Meta’s Muse in the coming weeks, Bloomberg reported on November 11, citing people who heard co-founder Zhang Yiming lay out the plan at a private all-hands meeting of the company’s AI team. This is a plan relayed by unnamed attendees, not a launch: the assistant has no announced name, and its timing is only “the coming weeks”.

ByteDance wants the assistant to extend its lead in AI video, and the company hopes this milestone will help it close the gap with the top US labs in as soon as three years, Bloomberg says. The reference point is Muse, Meta’s personal AI agent, which went live in North America in September, reached Japan on October 23 and can already check out through Shop Pay on Shopify stores in the countries where it is supported.

The longer goal comes with Zhang’s own caveat. He told researchers, engineers and support staff that ByteDance can compete with Anthropic and OpenAI at the cutting edge, but that getting there would take until at least 2029 or 2030, according to the people Bloomberg spoke to, who asked not to be named because the meeting was private.