Meta enters enterprise AI race with new business agent
By Katie Paul
Meta unveils AI business agent at WhatsApp Conversations conference
LONDON, June 3 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms on Wednesday unveiled an artificial intelligence agent aimed at helping businesses carry out day-to-day operations, positioning the social media giant as a player in the enterprise AI market.
Agentic capabilities and expanded business messaging
Announced at the company's WhatsApp-focused Conversations conference in London, the new product expands on existing business messaging services by enabling "agentic" capabilities in which the assistant can take actions on businesses' behalf, like booking calendar appointments and closing sales.
Meta said more than 1 million businesses were already using earlier chatbot versions of such agents on WhatsApp and Messenger. The new version will be added to Instagram as well and rolled out globally to businesses of all sizes.
Meta's enterprise AI ambitions and market competition
The move hints at Meta's ambitions to compete with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet's Google in the market for enterprise applications of its AI tools, leveraging the reach of its social media apps to try to convince companies to consolidate their ads and other workflows.
"This is definitely an enterprise play," Naomi Gleit, Meta's head of product, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.
Shares of Meta rose more than 3% in morning trading.
Customizable business agent features
The Business Agent can be customized to respond to queries on those apps, channeling a company's tone and handling tasks such as answering frequently asked questions, qualifying leads and escalating complex queries to human staff when needed.
Businesses will initially be able to access the tool for free, with paid subscription options planned in the coming months.
Beyond rule-based automations
"We actually want to take actions now. We actually want it to be able to complete the payment, to process the booking, to place the order," going beyond "rule-based automations" for legacy bots, Gleit said.
Business Agent Platform and integration with external systems
Alongside the new Business Agent offerings inside Meta's apps, the company is also launching a broader "Business Agent Platform" aimed at giving businesses tools to build custom AI agents to help them manage their operations elsewhere.
The platform is connected to hundreds of non-Meta systems like Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee, where those agents can be deployed, and provides larger businesses with enterprise-grade controls, guardrails and measurement, the company said.
New lines of business and internal restructuring
NEW LINES OF BUSINESS
Enterprise Solutions team and customer integration
Gleit is spearheading the company's efforts to expand into new lines of business around AI agents, including with a new team, Enterprise Solutions, announced as part of a recent companywide restructuring around AI.
The team will send squads of forward-deployed engineers to embed with enterprise customers, a model used by AI companies such as Anthropic that is aimed at navigating internal politics around AI adoption and writing custom code to help models deliver results.
Its scope is currently focused on new business agents, but it is also working to build and sell agentic AI products that businesses can use for additional internal functions.
Consolidating Meta's AI agents
Gleit is also working to consolidate the different AI agents Meta has built, including internal workflow-oriented tooling, a user-facing Meta AI support bot and a separate ads-focused "business assistant" launched globally last month, she said.
"The number one thing I hear, especially from small businesses, is 'I just want to go to one place that can do all the things,'" she said.
"You want to make things modular, and you also need to be willing to evolve, because the technology is moving so quickly."
AI agent risks and recent security lapses
LAPSES SHOW AI AGENT RISKS
Security incidents and technical challenges
Gleit acknowledged the risks associated with deeply integrating AI agents into a company's systems and giving them permission to take action on its behalf.
Meta has already experienced several embarrassing lapses associated with its agents, including an incident earlier this week in which hackers convinced its AI support chatbot into handing over access to high-profile Instagram accounts.
Asked about the case, Gleit said the company was still investigating, but had determined that the problem involved a flawed "technical check" within the underlying support function.
"It wasn't the agent. The agent actually exposed a technical check that wasn't working," she said. "There was sort of a separate system and technical check that had a bug, and because people were using the agent, they discovered it."
(Reporting by Katie Paul in London, additional reporting by Aditya Soni; Editing by Pooja Desai)
