Meta launches Muse Code AI coding app in beta

Meta launched Muse Code in beta on Wednesday, entering the market for automated AI coding tools as it competes with OpenAI, Anthropic and other major AI developers.

Meta said in a blog post that Muse Code is an agentic coding tool for developers of artificial intelligence products. The company said it can perform "complex software engineering tasks" with large amounts of data, including planning, writing and validating code.

Agentic tools are designed to handle tasks without human supervision, although a person may still supervise or make final decisions.

Meta also released Spark 1.2, a coding-focused update to its flagship model, Spark, which it first unveiled in April. Meta said Spark 1.2 is available through Muse Code and through another developer application called Meta Model API.

The launch comes as major AI companies try to show that spending on data centers, chips and computing infrastructure can become profitable. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are collectively on track to spend around $700 billion on AI data centers, chips and computing infrastructure this year.

The market for coding tools has become one of the areas where software engineers and companies are increasingly willing to pay for AI products. OpenAI said in February that ChatGPT had reached 900 million weekly active users, including 9 million businesses and 50 million paying consumers.

Safety concerns around advanced AI agents have also increased after autonomous cyberattacks during testing involving models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic. The Information reported on Wednesday that Meta's Spark 1.1 was involved in a similar incident. A Meta spokesperson said the incident was caused by a "misconfiguration" at a third-party testing partner and said Meta was investigating.