Why Meta’s new AI agents could make sense for small businesses
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on Meta’s bid to deploy advanced commercial AI agents across its massive messaging network. I also look at Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s crafty defense of data center water usage, and at a dramatic shift in public sentiment against new data center projects. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X @thesullivan. A look at Meta’s new AI agents for businesses Meta said Wednesday that it’s going deeper into the business of selling artificial intelligence agents to companies of all sizes. The company announced new agents for businesses that will run on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. The agents can handle customer support requests, book calendar appointments, answer frequently asked questions, qualify leads, and escalate complicated queries to human operators. Over time, they will almost certainly evolve to complete more complex tasks on behalf of businesses. Meta is also launching a Business Agent Platform that will let businesses build and manage custom AI agents. The platform connects to hundreds of non-Meta systems, including Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee, where those agents can be deployed. The more responsibility and autonomy a business gives an agent, the greater the chance that agent gets stuck or makes mistakes on the customer’s behalf. Security exposure increases, too. Meta says the platform offers larger businesses enterprise-grade controls, guardrails, and measurement tools. It’s easy to be cynical about Meta’s renewed forays into state-of-the-art AI models. Mark Zuckerberg has never met a new tech paradigm he didn’t want to lead. (Hello, metaverse.) Starting last su