Meta Built a Tamagotchi-Style Wearable to Give Its Muse AI Agent a Body

Meta has built a pocket-sized wearable device designed to act as a mobile home for its Muse AI agent, giving the software a physical form factor closer to a Tamagotchi than a smartwatch. The device was reported by TechCrunch, which described it as a tiny hardware companion rather than a full-fledged consumer product. The move signals that Meta is experimenting with ways to keep its AI assistant present even when a phone is out of reach or out of sight.

Details on the hardware remain thin, but the comparison to a Tamagotchi is telling. Bandai's egg-shaped virtual pet, launched in 1996, sold more than 80 million units worldwide by making a tiny screen feel like a creature that needed attention. Meta appears to be chasing a similar emotional hook: an AI agent that lives on your body, not in a browser tab, and that users check on the way they once checked on a digital pet.

The wearable fits into a broader push across the industry to move AI assistants off the screen. OpenAI has shown a small screenless device developed with former Apple designer Jony Ive, and Humane's AI Pin and Rabbit's R1 both tried to sell similar ideas before struggling with reviews and returns. Meta's version arrives with an advantage those startups lacked: an existing agent, Muse, plus the distribution reach of a company with billions of users across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta has not confirmed pricing, a release date or whether the device will ship at all. The company has a history of showing prototype hardware that never reaches shelves, including earlier neural-interface wristbands and the discontinued Portal line. A Tamagotchi-like wearable could sit in that experimental bucket, or it could become a companion accessory to the Ray-Ban smart glasses Meta already sells.

The strategic logic is clear even without product details. An always-present agent needs a body users will actually carry, and a small pendant is easier to wear than a headset or a pair of glasses. If Muse can learn from constant proximity — location, ambient sound, daily routines — Meta gains a data stream that rivals its social apps for engagement. That raises the same privacy questions regulators have already aimed at the company's other products.

What to watch next is whether Meta treats this as a real product or a demo. A launch would put it in direct competition with a growing field of AI wearables, most of which have yet to prove people want a second device beyond their phone. The harder question is whether a Tamagotchi-style agent creates genuine attachment or just another gadget that ends up in a drawer.