"Catches automatic payments"—AI Muse threatens the subscription economy

[Financial News] As AI agents serving as personal assistants become more widespread, they are threatening the subscription economy.
CNBC, a U.S. business news network, reported on the 27th local time that a feature allowing users of Meta Platforms' Muse, launched earlier this month as a personal AI agent, to find and cancel forgotten paid subscriptions is gaining popularity.
When users grant it access to their bank account and credit card information, Muse helps them find recurring transfers and payment records so they can cancel the associated services.
Subscription-management features like this existed before, but AI agents integrate them into personal-assistant services, making it easier to identify unnecessary spending. The subscription economy has generated substantial revenue growth through consumers' inertia—forgetting or postponing cancellations—and service designs that make canceling subscriptions time-consuming and difficult.
However, AI agents are eliminating both of these factors. Unlike physical-product subscriptions, their impact is expected to be greater in digital subscription sectors such as credit monitoring.
Neil Mahoney, a Stanford University economics professor, explained, citing relevant data, "People are about four times more likely to cancel a subscription when they are prompted to make a decision."
ScribeUp, a company that integrates AI-powered subscription-management technology into financial apps, said the number of cases in which its members requested cancellations of other subscription services had increased by about 1.8-fold from a year earlier.
Jordan Mackler, CEO of ScribeUp, said the average monthly subscription fee users canceled as a result was $17.39 (approximately 24,000 won).
The sector with the sharpest recent increase in cancellations was health and fitness subscriptions, up 3.8-fold from the previous year. It was followed by video streaming (2.2-fold), news and media (2.1-fold), and music streaming (1.9-fold).
Experts believe that AI personal assistants' management of personal finances could affect financial services broadly, beyond subscription services.
Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, noted in a recent analysis, "AI assistants similar to Muse could automatically transfer people's idle funds to high-yield accounts offering 3.3% to 5%, instead of leaving them in checking accounts (ordinary deposit and withdrawal accounts) with interest rates of just 0.1%." He added, "If everyone used such AI agents, banks could lose a substantial portion of their low-cost deposits, which have been a source of funding for loans."
[email protected] Lee Seok-woo, international affairs specialist Reporter