Meta Business Agent is Zuckerberg latest effort to diversify from ads

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, Sept. 25, 2024.

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Meta’s effort to push beyond ads and to make money from artificial intelligence is now targeting the red-hot market of AI agents.

The company said Wednesday that a new Meta Business Agent feature can be used across apps like WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram to respond to customer inquiries, recommend products and book appointments.

It will be included in a business-focused subscription tier for Meta One, which the company introduced last week as a way to package premium services for creators and companies. Meta also said at the time that it would begin testing subscription services for its Meta AI app and website.

“Today, I want to introduce Meta Business Agent, giving every business, of any size, an agent to talk to customers and help run your operation,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks for a company event in London on Wednesday. “Now, a clothing shop in Birmingham or a bakery in São Paulo can offer the same always-on, highly-personalized experience as a major brand.”

Zuckerberg has run a thriving online ads company since Facebook started targeting users with advertisements in 2007. Meta still counts on ads for about 98% of revenue, having repeatedly struggled to sell digital and physical products over the years. While AI has helped the company bolster its core business, Zuckerberg has bigger ambitions in AI as he tries to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in developing cutting-edge models and selling services on top.

Zuckerberg said Meta is currently “building agentic capabilities” that can do advanced tasks such as “suggesting ways to grow your business, giving you competitive intelligence and real-time insights into what’s working and what’s not.”

“As our models advance, your agent will take on more and eventually help you run your whole business,” Zuckerberg said in the prepared remarks.

In October, Meta…

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