Mark Zuckerberg wants meta agents to ‘run your entire business’

During Meta’s latest earnings conference call, Mark Zuckerberg hinted that the company has big plans for AI agents. Today we are seeing the first part of these projects come to fruition. At the Business Conversations event in London, Meta demonstrated AI agent tools for businesses that leverage WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.

Officially called “Meta Business Agent,” the new tool will allow business owners to delegate many of their daily tasks, including interacting with customers and scheduling appointments. Meta says the sales agent will have the ability to “close sales” and recommend products, although human business owners will be able to engage in interactions at any time.

The company has already tested the agents with small businesses in India, Mexico and Brazil and says more than 1 million people have already signed up. Now agents will be available to any business on WhatsApp, as well as Instagram and Messenger.

While this isn’t the first time Meta has allowed businesses to automate things like customer responses, the company clearly has a more ambitious vision for this functionality than a simple customer-facing chatbot. The ultimate goal, according to Zuckerberg, is for agents to “eventually help you run your entire business,” although he notes that this will also require the company’s underlying AI models to advance.

In the meantime, Meta is working on a set of advanced agent capabilities that allow agents to become more involved in the behind-the-scenes aspects of running a business. This includes “conducting market research, discovering product information, connecting to tools to manage your calendar, and providing competitive intelligence.” These features are not yet widely available, although there is a waiting list for interested parties.

There is also another major caveat. As you can imagine, Meta has no plans to give away all these new AI-based capabilities forever. Although the company says “getting started” with its new sales agent is free, it plans to move this feature behind one of its new subscription offerings “in the coming months.”