I think Meta's strategy is to capture the 'normie-tier' of AI users. I know most of us here on HN track model releases quite frequently and discuss every parameter weight out of them, but most of the world is just... oblivious?

I was discussing latest in tech with an accounting friend out of curiosity, and I kept talking about tiers of GPT-5.6 (Sol vs Terra vs Luna) and asked which one she used on the desktop 'Work' app, and she responded with, "just ChatGPT, what is Sol?."

I then realized that most people just stick with whatever default they're provided with, and it's a lot of them. So, us serial HN users and commenters are the extreme minority, and I'm sure millions of people will gobble up this Muse agent from Meta as if it's some sort of an innovative cutting-edge way to use the internet by Meta alone.

Curse of knowledge and all. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

I think you're right, but I'd add that... if this wasn't obvious to you without being told, you should really question your worldview a bit.

A lot of people think that chat.com is an AI called "chat". Most people don't know acronym "LLM". Most people don't know about the existence of companies called "OpenAI" or "Anthropic", or that they are worth a lot of money. Etc.

> "just ChatGPT, what is Sol?."

i'd really like to see some analytics on what proportion of users have ever switched the model in chatgpt because I anecdotally believe it is < 5%

I think we are lacking in the easy to use side of things. Once you go beyond browser based chatbots things become hard to set up.

I see lots of posting about using AI to create patches to get new apps working in wine, or reverse engineering firmware. But every time I’ve tried it it’s been quite a lot of work to set everything up. Even more so if you want VMs and some level of isolation from your sensitive data.

Having something that’s just a one click product that just works is more important than the smartest model.

I think of my mom who doesn't care and doesn't understand the difference between google AI Overview vs actual google search results. "I looked it up" - she doesn't care what tool she is using she just wants answers to how long bake pork or the best throw pillows to buy or whatever else she is looking up.

She's mostly using google AI tools because it's easy and free and on her landing page.

I'm a coder and a daily driver of ChatGPT and I don't really know what Sol is or how I can access it. I follow discussions here and know of its excistence, but I can't remember its relation to other models or tiers by heart. What ever the default thing the website is giving me has been good enough for my needs for years.

Literally what I was about to comment. This is meant to capture the normies, the busy parents managing school and work, the grandparents who want to make most of their retirement.

I am trying it now. It let me name my muse as Satan. I appreciate that it understands my humor, but I'm also not joking at the same time.

Yeah this to me is why Apple wins

To me it sounds like they are simply taking social moon shots. They tried to do a phone, tried to make a kitchen videophone, tried to make their own cryptocurrency, and tried to dominate open source AI, and now this is trying to make something like a digital robotic assistant. It might have reached a peak with the metaverse, when Zuck thought his corporation was destined to be the ruler of a Snow Crash style metaverse, to the point of renaming it. Maybe that's still the plan and they are looking for something that will lead to another metaverse play.