Meta

During Meta's most recent earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg hinted that the company had big plans for AI agents. Now, we're seeing the first part of those plans come to fruition. At the company's Conversations event in London, Meta introduced AI agent tools for businesses that rely on WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.

Officially called the "Meta Business Agent," the new tool will allow business owners to delegate many of their everyday tasks, including interacting with customers and booking appointments. Meta says that the business agent will have the ability to "close sales" and recommend products, though human business owners are able to jump into interactions at any point.

The company has already been testing the agents with small businesses in India, Mexico and Brazil and says that more than a million have already signed up. Now, the agents will be available to any business on WhatsApp, as well as Instagram and Messenger.

While it's not the first time that Meta has allowed businesses to automate things like replies to customers, the company clearly has a more ambitious vision for the feature than just another customer-facing chatbot. The ultimate goal, according to Zuckerberg, is for the agents to "eventually help you run your whole business," though he notes this will also require the company's underlying AI models to advance.

In the meantime, Meta is working on a set of advanced agentic capabilities that allow agents to get more involved with the behind-the-scenes aspects of running a company. This includes "conducting market research, surfacing product insights, connecting with the tools to manage your calendar and providing competitive intelligence." Those features aren't widely available yet, though there's a waitlist for interested parties.

There's also another major caveat. As you might imagine, Meta isn't planning to just give away all of these new AI-powered capabilities forever. While the company says that "getting started" with its new business agent is free, it plans to move the feature behind one of its new subscription offerings "in the coming months."