Meta launches its Muse AI agent in Japan with Mercari, Money Forward and Ticket Pia

What Meta launched in Japan

Meta started offering Muse, its personal AI agent, in Japan on 23 October 2026 (Japan time). In its Japanese-language announcement, the company says Japan is the first region outside North America to get Muse, which launched there in September. Muse is available in Japan from launch day on iOS, Android and the muse.ai website. Meta says many basic features are free, with subscription plans for people who want to do more.

The headline addition for Japan is a set of local partners. Meta says it is working with Mercari, the flea-market app operator, the household finance app Money Forward ME and the Ticket Pia ticketing service, alongside connectors to global services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Instagram, Stripe, Shopify, Trip.com, Agoda and Klook. Nikkei reported the launch the same morning and said Meta also plans to make Muse work on its smart glasses, including Ray-Ban-branded models from EssilorLuxottica.

Masahiro Ajisawa, representative director of Meta's Japanese unit, said in the release that Muse "moves various tasks forward on the user's behalf" so people can focus on what matters to them, and that Meta wants to connect Muse with the services people in Japan already use for shopping, travel and day-to-day scheduling. That quote is AI Lookout's translation from the Japanese original.

What Muse does

Muse is an agent rather than a chatbot. In Meta's September launch post, the company describes it as a system that does the work as well as answering questions: it can open a browser, fill in forms, send email, book travel and, for longer jobs, keep working after the person closes the app. It comes back when something changes or when it needs approval, such as before it sends an email or makes a purchase. It also keeps a memory of what the user has told it, so it can act on details mentioned once.

The Japanese release repeats that design. People talk to Muse in the Muse app the way they would message another person, tell it what needs to get done, and it builds a plan and carries out the steps. Meta says it was built so that no special skills are needed, and pitches it for both small chores and bigger goals that require coordinating time and resources over days or weeks.

Connectors are what make that possible. Each connector links Muse to a service the user already has, so it can read and organise email in Gmail, move appointments in Google Calendar, use content saved on Instagram, or shop and book through commerce and travel platforms. The user chooses which services to connect and how much access each gets, and can change or remove access at any time.

The Japanese partners: Mercari, Money Forward ME and Ticket Pia

The three local partners point to where Meta thinks Japanese users will want an agent. Mercari runs one of the country's biggest second-hand marketplaces, so an agent that can list, search or buy there fits the kind of errands Muse was designed for. Money Forward ME aggregates bank, card and investment accounts into one household budget, which would let Muse answer questions about spending or help with savings goals. Ticket Pia sells concert, sports and theatre tickets.

Meta's wording is careful on timing. The release says Meta is "moving forward with" these integrations alongside the launch, and that it will keep adding services Japanese people use every day. It does not list exactly which actions each connector supports on day one, so it is worth checking inside the app before assuming Muse can, for example, complete a Mercari purchase end to end.

Money Forward is the most sensitive of the three because it touches financial data. Meta's general promise is that Muse cannot see payment methods or passwords and that credentials sit in secure storage it can use without reading. That matters more for a finance app than for a ticket site, and users will want to look at what access the connector asks for before granting it.

How a Klook booking works inside Muse

Klook gave the clearest picture of how a booking flows. According to Marketech APAC, which reported the partnership on 23 October, Muse recommends experiences from Klook's catalogue of 426,000 bookable offerings across more than 4,600 destinations, taking into account the traveller's destination, interests, availability and preferences. Users can ask follow-up questions, compare options and check cancellation and rescheduling terms in the same chat.

When the user is ready, Muse places the order and sends them to Klook's own secure payment page to pay. After payment, it confirms the booking in the conversation and keeps the details there. Klook says Muse asks for the traveller's confirmation before sensitive steps, including placing orders and starting payments. In other words, the agent does the searching and the paperwork, but the money moves on Klook's checkout rather than inside Muse.

Jakii Chu, Klook's senior vice-president for global marketing, said Klook is innovating with Meta "as travelers increasingly turn to AI for inspiration and trip planning", and the companies argues AI-led discovery can surface smaller, independent operators that rarely show up at the top of search results. Whether that happens depends on how Muse ranks options, which neither company has described.

Safety and privacy promises, and the share-link episode

Meta's privacy pitch for Japan is the same as in the US. Muse runs in what Meta calls Muse Secure VM, a dedicated virtual machine in the cloud for each user that holds the agent, the user's data and the credentials for connected services. A separate agent, called Sentinel, runs on the same machine but is kept apart from Muse and controls whether anything Muse does reaches the internet. Muse asks before sensitive actions, and users can see a history of what it has done and plans to do.

Meta also says users can opt out of having their Muse interactions used to train Meta's AI models, and that Muse does not share conversations or data from the virtual machine with Meta's advertising systems. Those are company commitments rather than independently audited claims, but they are written into the launch materials for both markets.

The launch comes days after Muse's first public security problem. As AI Lookout reported, researchers found that Muse share links could be discovered through public DNS records, exposing pages people had shared. Meta paused sharing, and on 22 October The Verge reported that it was back on. Meta's David Singleton said the issue was with the web addresses of shared artifacts such as documents and images, not with chat sharing, and that artifacts shared before the fix now have new links.

Muse also depends on outside tools to keep secrets away from the model. In the US, payments go through Link by Stripe, which generates one-time card numbers, and in September Meta said 1Password support was coming; AI Lookout covered how 1Password lets agents like Muse sign in without seeing passwords. The Japanese release lists Stripe as a connector but does not say whether Link's buyer protections apply in Japan.

What is not in Japan yet

Several features Meta showed at its Connect event in September are not confirmed for Japan. The release lists an advanced voice mode that can hold long natural conversations while working in the background, Muse Realtime Avatar, an expressive avatar that is English-only, and a Muse email address of its own that it can use for tasks and correspondence. Meta says it will announce Japan availability for those separately.

The US launch also let people message Muse inside WhatsApp. The Japanese release mentions only the Muse app on iOS and Android and the muse.ai website, which makes sense in a country where LINE, not WhatsApp, is the default messaging app. Meta has not said whether Muse will come to LINE.

Glasses support is also future tense. Nikkei says Muse will work on Meta's smart glasses later, but gives no date for Japan.

Why Japan, and why it matters for online retailers

Japan gives Meta a large, smartphone-heavy market with well-established online shopping and travel habits, and a test of how Muse handles a language and service ecosystem very different from the US. Scale is already significant: Muse has passed 10 million users, a figure that came up this week when AI Lookout reported that Meta created non-voting Class C shares to fund its AI push.

Nikkei framed the launch around agentic commerce, where an AI shops on the user's behalf. Its example is a user asking Muse to buy coffee beans: the agent searches several shops, compares products and suggests options. If that becomes routine, Nikkei notes, consumers may visit online stores and travel sites less often, and those businesses could lose direct contact with their customers. The paper said shares of online travel companies such as Booking Holdings and Airbnb fell in the US after Muse launched, and that Amazon has reportedly said it will not connect with outside AI agents, Muse included.

That is the trade-off Japanese retailers now face. Joining as a connector, as Mercari, Klook and Ticket Pia have, keeps a business inside the agent's options but lets Meta's software sit between the shop and the buyer. Staying out keeps the customer relationship but risks being invisible to users who stop browsing.

What to watch next

Three things are worth tracking over the next few weeks. First, which Japanese services join next, since Meta says it will keep expanding local connectors. Second, what the paid plans cost in yen and what they unlock, which the Japanese release does not spell out. Third, whether the voice mode, the avatar and Muse email arrive in Japan, and whether Muse follows users onto LINE or Meta's glasses.

Competition is also arriving. Anthropic opened Claude Duet, its own proactive agent app that asks before it acts, this week, and agent features from other AI companies are spreading quickly. For now, Muse is the most widely available consumer agent in Japan with local commerce partners on day one.