Muse, the band, lost its social media handles to Muse, Meta's new AI agent

Meta's newly released AI agent, Muse, is now using social media handles once controlled by the English rock band Muse. The exact circumstances of how the accounts changed hands are unclear, but the situation has raised questions about Meta and other large platforms' ability to commandeer usernames when it suits them.

The band, which trademarked its name in 1999, had used the @muse moniker on Instagram and X for years. Earlier this summer, fans noticed the band's Instagram username seemed to change to @museband. According to The Independent, the change happened in July, though Reddit users appear to have spotted a change in early June. By the time Meta officially unveiled Muse the AI agent on Tuesday, the social media company was using the @Muse handle for its new agent. The band also once used @Muse on X but is now going by @museband on that platform as well.

It is not clear when the X changeover happened, but it seems to have caused crossed wires: Mark Zuckerberg's initial posts about Muse the agent apparently tagged the band's account, as New York Times reporter Mike Issac pointed out. Early posts from other Meta execs also inexplicably tagged the band, which Issac said was a bug. Issac tweeted, “best bug in twitter history,” in a post dated September 8, 2026.

While details around the changes have not been made public, some fans have expressed disappointment that the band's name is being used for an AI feature. As The Independent notes, Muse has written songs heavily inspired by fears and anxieties surrounding technology and how it might be used for social oppression. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and neither did representatives for the band.

This is not the first time an Instagram handle has changed hands around the time Meta made a major announcement. The company secured the @Meta Instagram handle, which had been used by an independent motorcycle magazine of the same name, shortly after it announced it was changing the company's name from Facebook to Meta in 2021. The magazine never publicly commented on how that name change came about, but its editor-in-chief wrote at the time that it felt like a “punch in the gut” to see a “corporate Goliath” take on the identity it had used since 2014. The magazine later changed its name. Likewise, when Meta launched Threads in 2023, it did not control the @threads handle on Instagram. The account was instead used by a small fashion retailer called American Threads, but a month later Meta suddenly gained control of the account.

Meta has said little about how such name changes play out. In 2021, the company said it had not made any legal threats to the motorcycle magazine but did not answer questions about whether it had contacted or paid the publisher.