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Report: ByteDance and Tencent Accelerate Personal AI Agent R&D to Catch Up with Meta Muse
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- DeepHorus
On October 11, according to IT Home citing Caixin, after Meta released its personal agent Muse, domestic technology giants quickly followed suit. ByteDance and Tencent are both accelerating their layouts related to personal AI agents, respectively advancing internal projects and launching new products. Personal agents are becoming a new direction of focus for global technology companies.
On September 8 local time, Meta launched the personal AI agent product Muse, which can complete tasks such as sending emails and booking travel on behalf of users. Unlike traditional question-and-answer chatbots, Muse's core positioning is an "action-oriented agent" that takes actual actions on behalf of users, focusing on taking over trivial tasks across platforms. Mark Zuckerberg regards it as a key product on the path toward "personal superintelligence." Muse can access users' data in various applications such as email, calendar, payments, health, shopping, and smart home, but requires users' active authorization. Users can choose which applications Muse connects to and have the right to revoke its access at any time.
On ByteDance's side, on October 9, an insider revealed that the company had stepped up research and development of personal agent products before the National Day holiday. The project began with a new project ByteDance launched in April this year, codenamed "Spell." It is a continuation of the personal agent direction for the 2025 Doubao mobile assistant, when Doubao had already started internal testing of products in the personal agent direction. After personal agents such as Muse became popular overseas, ByteDance accelerated the project's progress.
It is reported that ByteDance's personal agent product is led by the Doubao mobile assistant team, with the Spell project and the Doubao conversation team jointly responsible. The company plans to combine the "Spell" project with the Doubao product, with the goal of launching it externally as soon as possible. This arrangement shows that ByteDance hopes to leverage Doubao's existing capabilities to speed up the implementation of personal agents.
Tencent, meanwhile, launched a personal agent product called LightVela at the end of September and calls it a "cloud personal assistant." The product can be accessed through WeChat and is online around the clock to help users handle various daily requests. However, LightVela is still in the developer experience stage. This means Tencent has begun testing the waters in the personal agent field, but has not yet entered large-scale official release.
From an industry impact perspective, the release of Meta Muse triggered rapid follow-up by domestic technology giants. The moves by ByteDance and Tencent indicate that competition in personal agents is shifting from traditional chatbots toward the direction of being able to execute tasks for users. Muse emphasizes active user authorization and revocable access in permission management, and this design may also become a key industry focus. If personal agents are to take over cross-platform tasks, the scope of application connections and user trust will be crucial.
Looking ahead, ByteDance plans to combine the "Spell" project with the Doubao product and launch it externally as soon as possible; Tencent's LightVela is still in the developer experience stage; Meta Muse has already been officially released. Personal agents can cover scenarios such as email, calendar, payments, health, shopping, and smart home, and are regarded as a key product on the path toward "personal superintelligence." Whether domestic manufacturers can accelerate their catch-up and launch mature products will become the market's next focus of attention.
