Meta Says Its Muse Agent Books Travel. Here’s How It Works

Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, has arrived with a small promise and big implications. The company introduced the bot as a task-oriented assistant that can do a wide variety of tasks, including "book travel." According to its App Store listing, it handles "the research, the comparisons, the back-and-forth, the bookings" to "plan and book a whole trip." Skift tested the promise, and the specifics of how it carries out travel searches and bookings matter. Because there’s no unified path, but two separate approaches. Flights run through a direct connection to travel infrastructure company Duffel, which feeds Muse live airline inventory. Hotels go through a browser, where the bot shops consumer websites the way a person would. Only one of those paths gives the travel industry a role. Asked to find a New York City hotel for Nov. 1–2 within a $350–$450 nightly budget, Muse first suggested the Marlton Hotel from published prices, noting