Everyone’s seen it, from subway ads to Instagram feeds—the beige, fluffy and cuddly character meant to represent Meta’s new virtual assistant, Muse. The little guy even has a name: Jolly.
Released in September, the AI agent has taken the world by storm, instantly becoming the number-one free app across multiple platforms. Last week, OpenAI released its own adorable AI agent: Dots, personified by fuzzy, colorful shapes.
Using fun characters as avatars for technology isn’t new. Those of a certain age remember Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant first released in 1996 with the launch of Microsoft Office 97. AI companies are increasingly turning to a similar marketing strategy of darling, customizable agents with which users can build relationships. The real question lies in how deliberate the choice is, particularly during a time where “AI doomer”-ism is on the rise.
“They're trying to make it more relatable, less scary, and their research must have told them that these kind of fun, cute, lovable characters are the best way to go,” Aaron Samson, a former marketing executive at Meta, TikTok, Hasbro and Mattel who’s now a keynote speaker, told This Week in Fintech.
But he called the use of its cutesy characters “a little suspect.”
“Even if your intention is not to target a younger demographic with this, younger demographics will like it,” Samson said.
Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots are restricted to those 18 and older, but both are marketed as animated, toy-like characters.
OpenAI
Meta explained the journey toward the cuddly character in a blog post.
“As we had these long-running conversations, it felt very odd talking to a corporate logo or entity. We all imagined what we were talking to in very different ways,” the company said. “Creating our own avatar, naming it, and giving it a unique style has become one of the core features people light up about most.”
The AI agents have the power to connect to a user’s financial services, calendars, apps—essentially all of their virtual presence. But AI has come under fire in recent months amid a slew of industry insiders warning of safety concerns and growing calls to establish guardrails.
A September 30 Quinnipiac poll showed that 73% of those surveyed were concerned about the “potential threat to human survival” posed by AI, while 86% supported independent safety standards for companies working with advanced models.
While Meta explained its decision on the Muse avatar in its blog post, OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from This Week in Fintech.
Cassandra Napoli, a consumer and culture trend forecaster at consumer insight and data analytics firm WGSN, said packaging AI in “cutesy tech” serves to both delight early adopters and AI enthusiasts while winning over skeptics. It’s particularly important for Gen Z, who have shown widespread hesitation toward AI.
“To make something that's an inanimate idea and an inanimate object like AI have more of an identity, a human identity to relate to, to connect with,” Napoli said, “I think it's really the only way that you could win over people that are maybe skeptical and untrusting.”
