Meta's New AI Agent 'Muse' Takes Over Social Handles Once Used by Rock Band Muse

Meta officially unveiled its new AI agent, Muse, on Tuesday — and the launch came with an unexpected complication: the @Muse handle on Instagram and X was already in use by the English rock band Muse, which trademarked its name in 1999.

By the time Meta's agent went live, the band was no longer using @Muse on either platform. Fans first noticed the band's Instagram username had shifted to @museband as early as June, with The Independent reporting the change occurred in July. The band's X handle underwent a similar switch to @museband, though the timing of that change is unclear. Neither Meta nor representatives for the band have confirmed how or why the handles changed.

The transition produced visible confusion at launch. According to New York Times reporter Mike Isaac, Mark Zuckerberg's initial posts introducing Muse the AI agent tagged the band's account instead of the new agent's account. Other Meta executives made the same mistake in early posts, which Isaac characterized as a "bug."

Meta has not responded to requests for comment on the circumstances surrounding the handle changes. Representatives for the band have also not commented publicly.

A pattern at Meta

This is not the first time a desirable Instagram handle has changed ownership around a major Meta announcement. In 2021, Meta acquired the @Meta Instagram handle from an independent motorcycle magazine of the same name shortly after Facebook rebranded as Meta. The magazine's editor-in-chief described the loss as a "punch in the gut" at the time; the publication later changed its name. Meta told reporters in 2021 that it had not made legal threats against the magazine but declined to say whether it had contacted or compensated the publisher.

A similar pattern played out with Threads in 2023. When Meta launched the app, it did not control the @threads handle on Instagram — that belonged to a small fashion retailer, American Threads. Meta gained control of the handle roughly a month after launch.

Meta officially prohibits buying, selling, or trading Instagram usernames, though sought-after handles are known to change hands through informal or undisclosed arrangements. Similar disputes have occurred on X: the previous holder of @X was told in 2023 he would lose the handle (and was offered merchandise in exchange), and the longtime holder of @music had his username reassigned that same year for use as an official account. X has since introduced a formal "handle marketplace" for inactive usernames.

What this means

Meta has not disclosed a mechanism for how it obtains high-value usernames ahead of major launches, and this incident follows an identical pattern to the @Meta and @threads handle transfers in 2021 and 2023. The recurrence across three separate launches suggests either a consistent informal negotiation process with existing handle holders or a policy gap that lets platform operators reassign valuable usernames when it benefits their own products — something Meta's public username policy does not acknowledge. For the band Muse, whose lyrics frequently address surveillance and corporate technological overreach, the optics of losing its identity to an AI product are difficult to separate from the substance of the complaint: large platforms retain outsized leverage over identifiers that predate their own products.