Key points
Meta's consumer AI agent Muse topped the US App Store with more than 900,000 downloads in six days Research firm Citrini argues the businesses most at risk are those whose profits depend on customers not switching, canceling or comparing Nearly 60% of US subscribers pay for at least one service they do not use, wasting an average of $26.79 a month Separate research found only 7% of consumers would let an AI agent buy something without approving it first
A large share of the US consumer economy is funded by people not bothering.
Forgotten subscriptions, insurance policies that renew on autopilot, cash sitting in accounts paying nothing, loyalty points that expire unused.
Research firm Citrini argues in a new note released on Tuesday that Meta's Muse marks the moment that stops being a safe place to earn money, because agents do not get bored, tired or resigned.
What Inertia Is Actually Worth
The numbers are not small. A March 2026 survey of 1,272 US adults by Self Financial found 59.9% were paying for at least one subscription they never used, carrying an average of 2.6 dormant services and wasting $26.79 every month. That works out at more than $320 a year per person, and the figure has risen sharply from $10.57 a month a year earlier.
Subscriptions are only the visible layer. Citrini's list runs through insurance renewals priced on the assumption nobody re-shops, savings balances left in low-yield accounts, unclaimed flight credits, and any service whose pitch amounts to navigating complexity the customer finds tedious.
"Agents removed friction," the firm writes, arguing that trillions of dollars of enterprise value have depended on human limitations persisting.
Why The Timing Changed
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The peg is adoption rather than capability. Muse reached number one in the US App Store with over 900,000 downloads in its first six days, according to Bloomberg, which makes it the first consumer agent to land at that scale.
Citrini concedes the product "feels less robust than other solutions" but treats that as the point, since Meta is aiming at consumers rather than enterprises. The firm calls it agentic AI's Studio Ghibli moment, meaning the release where a technology stops being a niche interest and becomes something ordinary people use without knowing what it is called.
Where The Note Is Guessing
Parts of the argument are dressed up as history. The February piece Citrini quotes at length is a scenario set in 2027, written in the past tense, describing real estate commissions collapsing below 1% and the median American consuming 400,000 tokens a day. None of that has happened, and the firm says openly it expects to be "right about a few and almost certainly wrong about more."
Trust Is Still The Brake
The harder constraint is consumer willingness. Research by YouGov for ACI Worldwide this year found just 7% would allow an agent to make purchases without approval, while 53% were uncomfortable with the idea entirely.
That does not kill the thesis. It changes the timeline. Canceling a forgotten subscription needs far less trust than buying something, which is why the friction layer is likely to fall first, and the rest more slowly than any research note suggests.
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