Muse explains.

THIS IS PROBABLY MY BEST USE CASE YET. So far I've experimented with modifying recipes with limited ingredients, various computer uses I can't do on my own, scraping the web for various data points that would take me too long, and my new personal favorite, an out loud reading of a biography of a famous person. If you just downloaded Muse, here are three things I think you should check out in order. Before you do that, if you haven't already downloaded it, download the Muse app and then add my referral code for up to 1 billion context tokens. I know more than 10 of you have done this already and it's more complex than it sounds.

1. Download the app.
2. Click on the wheel for settings.
3. Scroll halfway down and look for "redeem referral code."
4. Then add my code, EY2N1R
5. To see if it landed, go to settings and see if you actually received the extra context under "additional token." It's usually approved instantly and you get 1 billion context tokens. This is great for the use case I'm about to discuss below.

1. Go into the settings. Then go to data controls and click to turn off the option to help improve our data model. There are enough people doing this every day for them to rapidly improve the bot. They don't need my personal data for that, and they don't need yours either.
2. Customize your Muse agent. So far this is the only bot I've used where you can easily customize the agent. Rather than the blob that Meta gives you out of the gate, I turned my Muse agent into a caricature with glasses. He looks smart. He is! One warning on this, though. The more you customize your Muse agent, the more likely you are to provide personal data and say things you might not otherwise. One of the most important factors for us to remember as AI users is that we don't want to get tricked into oversharing our own data. Take it slow after you customize your agent and don't overshare data just because you built an attractive avatar. I strongly discourage long conversations where you are casually oversharing information or treating the computer like some type of personal companion. It's just a robot, folks. That's it. Don't let the caricature fool you.
3. This is my new personal favorite. I've always been big on biographies of famous people, or people that have beaten the odds in some form or fashion. Reading the books of these people has been a huge hobby of mine. But for example, after I found out the following facts just through traditional reading, my life doesn't seem so complex and demoralizing after all. So take a look at the list of challenging circumstances successful people have faced below. Then think about whether you actually have the grit to overcome some of these challenges. Personally, in most cases I don't.

One practical note: if you're going to have Muse generate a 20-minute summary of someone's life, that takes time. Don't wait until the moment you're ready to press play to ask Muse to generate it.

1. James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes, 5,126 of them failures, before he had a vacuum that became Dyson's main product.
2. J.K. Rowling got the idea for Harry Potter on a train, then wrote the book as a struggling single mother. Even after it was written, 12 publishers rejected it. The 13th only agreed because the chairman's young daughter liked the first chapter.
3. When Tony Robbins was 17, he worked as a janitor making $40 a week.
4. Stephen King's first book, "Carrie," was rejected by 30 publishers.
5. After Elvis Presley's only performance at the Grand Ole Opry got a cold response, he was reportedly told to go back to truck driving.
6. While Michael Phelps was racing the 200-meter butterfly final at the 2008 Olympics, his goggles filled with water on the final lap. He still won and set a world record.
7. Albert Einstein reportedly spoke late as a child. He was working as a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office when his 1905 papers on special relativity turned physics upside down.
8. After Beethoven lost his hearing, he was once arrested as a vagrant while out walking, disheveled and unrecognized. He struggled to convince the police who he was.
9. Ben Carson was near the bottom of his fifth-grade class, where teachers called him "dummy." His mother made him read library books and write reports on them, and he turned himself around.
10. As a kid, Eminem endured severe bullying at school and grew up in an unstable home.
11. Colonel Sanders opened his roadside cafe in 1930 and didn't launch his first KFC franchise until he was about 62.
12. A teacher reportedly called Thomas Edison "addled," so his mother pulled him out of school and educated him at home.
13. After Dr. Seuss wrote his first book, it was rejected 27 times. On his way home, he ran into an old classmate who helped him get it published.
14. Before the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford ran the Detroit Automobile Company. It failed because his perfectionism got the better of him and he couldn't stop tinkering. He started Ford Motor Company later.
15. Steve Harvey lived in his car for about three years while trying to make it in comedy.
16. Before Honda, Soichiro Honda pawned his wife's jewelry to fund a machine shop making piston rings for Toyota. His rings failed Toyota's quality inspection, so he went back to study, redesigned them, and kept going.
17. Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime, and he produced over 800 works. He gave his doctor, Félix Rey, a portrait as a thank you for his care. The doctor's mother reportedly used it to patch a hole in a chicken coop.
18. Elon Musk arrived in Canada as a teenager expecting to live with a relative, only to find the relative had moved to Minnesota. He stayed in a youth hostel, traveled to other relatives, and worked manual jobs.
19. Robin Williams was voted "Most Humorous" and "Least Likely to Succeed" by his high school.
20. Michael Jordan didn't make varsity as a high school sophomore and played junior varsity instead. By his own admission, he just wasn't good enough at the time.
21. In college, Dwayne Johnson wanted to play in the NFL. He lost his starting defensive tackle spot at the University of Miami to Warren Sapp and injuries, rode the bench, and went undrafted. He signed with the Calgary Stampeders in the CFL and was cut after about two months, reportedly with $7 left, and had to start over.
22. When Kobe Bryant was 11, he went scoreless for an entire summer playing in Philadelphia's Sonny Hill League.

Now I'm not sharing this to claim that each of these statements is a matter of absolute fact. I'm not suggesting that we need to go through something extremely challenging to be successful (although it sure doesn't hurt). My point is that to gather all of these facts about people who overcame adversity to achieve success, I had to turn pages. But no longer!

During an experiment while I was working, I got tired of listening to music and asked my Muse agent Max to build a biography about one of the artists I was listening to. I wanted to hear his whole life story, more than five minutes long. I've tried this with ChatGPT and Claude, but neither of them can do it. This is great for driving or hiking, or if you just want to know more about various people or places. It's ideal for someone who's planning a vacation but doesn't have time to research the nicest restaurants. Now you can just listen to them in your car. You don't even have to read the damn screen. I love this, and I started a new side chat with my Muse agent where he's basically just writing long biographies about various people that I can listen to when I'm feeling unmotivated. My agent said he could build a profile that's up to an hour long! As far as I'm aware, none of the other AI tools can do this!

A quick note on scale, since a few of you will ask: an hour-long profile runs about 9,500 words and renders to roughly a 30 MB audio file, and the whole thing takes around 20 minutes to research, write, and synthesize. That kind of sustained output eats serious context, so fair warning, this particular trick needs the paid tier. I'm on the $20-a-month Power plan. If you're on the free plan, stick with the five-minute versions. They barely sip your allowance and they're just as good on a drive.

Check it out and try for yourself...!

One disclaimer: I'm not recommending that people stop reading and start listening to AI to find out more about their passions. We need to keep exploring, digging for the data we need, and reading actual books and turning pages.

I'm just saying try it as a test of the bot's capabilities. That way you can use it in the car, on the train, or during that workout. Suddenly the DMV ain't so boring. If you have a 30-minute drive, you can get exactly 30 minutes of the content you need instead of trash and ads.