For years, WhatsApp has served as a communication tool for businesses of all sizes worldwide. Now, Meta is integrating artificial intelligence into that framework, aiming to transform WhatsApp into practical workflow software for small and medium-sized enterprises. On Wednesday, the company announced that its customer support AI bot—now called Meta Business Agent—is being made available globally within WhatsApp. This rollout follows nearly two years of testing AI agents in WhatsApp Business for customer support in countries such as India and Mexico.

Meta says the AI agent can handle a range of tasks, including answering customer inquiries, recommending products, scheduling appointments, qualifying sales leads, and redirecting queries to a human representative when necessary. The company is also making the bot accessible within Instagram direct messages. Meta is currently testing a feature that allows the Business Agent to deliver daily summaries of chats that occurred overnight, along with relevant insights. This capability is being trialed with select accounts on WhatsApp Business, Instagram Pro, Messenger, and Meta Business Suite. The company is actively working to add further capabilities, such as conducting market research, highlighting product features, managing users' calendars, and integrating with external tools to extract competitive intelligence. Additionally, Meta is developing functionality that would allow the Agent to surface businesses when users search for them or share contact details in a chat. It is also building a platform that enables larger enterprises to create custom agents that can connect with systems like Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee.

Meta plans to charge businesses for using this AI agent, incorporating it into certain tiers of its WhatsApp Business Premium subscription. The company noted that large businesses will pay for the agent based on the number of tokens they consume. This move is crucial for WhatsApp, which has historically relied on businesses paying for messaging and click-to-WhatsApp advertisements.