After the recent backlash against Meta’s so-called “pervert” smart glasses, this week Mark Zuckerberg launched a much cuter alternative: the Muse “charm” device. With a screen that shows a cutesy little avatar, it has drawn comparisons with Tamagotchis. The “little guy” could fit, like a Labubu, on to a keychain or bag.
But unlike a Labubu, the interactive AI assistant will have significant capabilities, including the ability to have live conversations. It can answer emails, book travel or do your weekly food shop. According to Katie Seaborn, a Cambridge associate professor who has been researching cuteness – creating the science of cute voices within the context of computing – it’s cute because it “basically looks like a baby”.
For Joshua Paul Dale, professor at Chuo University in Tokyo and author of Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World: “It’s really significant that along with the wearable charm, Meta also introduced a new pair of smart glasses with no camera. Everyone hates cameras in smart glasses. But if the camera is contained in a charm you wear around your neck, it shifts the agency.
Suddenly, you’re not recording people. It’s just a cute little animated avatar looking out on the world.” An individualised, customisable, and in this case adorable, AI companion, it tracks with Zuckerberg’s commitment to the idea of personal, wearable super-intelligence that you can chat to. As well as a broader shift towards cute technology, cited by forecasters WGSN as a top trend for 2026.
And it’s doing it in the simplest possible way … It’s using a very simplified, tiny 2-inch screen to encourage you to anthropomorphise the figure on it so that you treat it as if it’s human even though you know it’s not.” Its cuteness is, according to Seaborn, “strategic”. You can trust us.” To try to harness the power of cuteness, according to Seaborn, “makes sense, especially from a big tech perspective because maybe people are getting wise to the ways of current strategies when it comes to people’s attention, their personal data and what have you. And now they’re trying new things that may or may not work”.
Seaborn, who has just moved to the University of Cambridge from Japan, points out that “this is something that is very normal in Japan. So the first thing you notice when you go there is that every single thing has a mascot. The government organisations, the media companies, the businesses, they all have a cute mascot”.
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