Daily English Article — October 31, 2026

Meta's AI shopping agent, Muse, has generated significant buzz on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reported that over 10 million people in the US and Canada have activated Muse, with more than 25 percent using it for shopping—a figure exceeding the company's own expectations. Wall Street analysts have grown anxious that AI agents like Muse could erode brand loyalty, trigger price wars, and compress corporate profit margins across a wide range of industries.

However, executives from roughly 50 companies across diverse sectors—including travel, food delivery, internet services, and self-storage—told both WIRED and their own investors that the disruption has been minimal so far. DoorDash reported only 'hundreds' of orders from AI agents. T-Mobile said it had seen 'nothing of significance,' while hotel chain Hilton dismissed agent-driven bookings as 'insignificant.' Banking provider Ally Financial described activity as 'quite low,' and eBay called it 'very, very small.'

The slow uptake extends beyond shopping. Fitness chain Life Time Group reported 'zero' membership cancellations attributed to AI agents, contradicting fears that Muse would help users efficiently dump unwanted subscriptions. Insurers, storage companies, and major delivery platforms in India echoed the same sentiment, with Eternal estimating agentic commerce as 'close to zero.' The disconnect between Meta's optimistic figures and companies' actual data raises pressing questions about where Muse users are actually spending their money.

Meta has pointed to partnerships with major retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, and Gap as evidence of Muse's commercial momentum. Many of those partners, however, had not yet reported earnings at the time of publication and have yet to share concrete data on agent-driven sales. Despite the lukewarm present reality, some businesses are already proactively adapting. Chipotle discovered that agents struggled with its website due to glitches involving loyalty discounts and after-hours ordering, prompting a cleanup of its backend code.

Across the industry, executives broadly agree that AI agents are still in an early, experimental phase. Yet the enormous public anxiety surrounding AI is pushing companies to extract lessons early, even from limited data. DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, who also sits on Meta's board, candidly suggested that current hype around agents might be 'delusional.' Whether Muse ultimately reshapes commerce or fades into irrelevance remains an open question—but businesses are watching carefully and preparing for both outcomes.

As the Halloween season draws to a close, The Verge has curated a selection of creepy, disturbing, and unconventional short films freely available on YouTube. Rather than recommending a single feature-length horror movie or album, the piece offers a small but varied collection designed to appeal to a range of tastes—from fans of surreal art house cinema to those who prefer cosmic horror or classic viral internet content. The common thread is a talent for unsettling the viewer in memorable ways.

One standout recommendation is 'Possibly in Michigan,' a 1983 short film by Cecelia Condit that blended feminist themes with a musical format and darkly comedic cannibalism. Despite being made decades ago, it found a massive new audience after being uploaded to YouTube and later shared on Reddit. The film, only 12 minutes long, has since inspired numerous YouTube video essays dedicated to unpacking its layered, disturbing imagery and cultural significance.

'Homemade Gatorade' is highlighted as a masterclass in threading the needle between horror and comedy. Using a blend of stiff animation and heavily processed video footage, it creates a deeply uncanny aesthetic that makes viewers simultaneously want to laugh and recoil. The short follows a road trip structure that takes increasingly bizarre turns, making it difficult to categorize—and all the more unsettling for it. The piece demonstrates how experimental form can amplify psychological discomfort.

'Portrait of God' is praised for resisting a common pitfall of big-budget cosmic horror: showing too much. The short film deliberately spends much of its runtime on vast, empty imagery, trusting the viewer's imagination to fill in the terror. Similarly, 'Heck' is recommended as a more accessible introduction to the style of 'Skinamarink,' the experimental horror feature it inspired. Where 'Skinamarink' demands 100 minutes of patience, 'Heck' distills the same atmosphere of dread into a taut 29 minutes.

Rounding out the list are two final recommendations: a one-minute loopable abstract short by David B Earle, available in a four-hour looped version ideal for Halloween parties, and a musical offering from Nick Lutsko described as essential Halloween listening. Together, the collection reflects the remarkable breadth of horror content that YouTube hosts—spanning decades of filmmaking, multiple subgenres, and vastly different production budgets—all united by their capacity to linger unsettlingly in the viewer's mind.