Meta Unveils Business AI: Revolutionizing Customer Service and Ad Personalization

Meta gives advertisers new AI personalization tools - while using your chats to target content

It can provide basic online customer and sales support for businesses. Meta is continuing to build AI for advertisers. Its latest AI agent and several new tools are designed to serve as an automated online sales assistant and personalization feature for small- to medium-sized businesses, even outside of Facebook and other Meta platforms. Also: 5 reasons I use local AI on my desktop - instead of ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude At the same time, the company will start using your chats with Meta AI to personalize the ads you see on Meta platforms. The company's new Business AI agent can provide online shoppers with basic customer support and product recommendations on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. The goal is to quicken the process between customers discovering a new product and completing a purchase, while simultaneously freeing businesses up to focus their attention on more pressing tasks. Leading tech companies have been investing heavily in business-facing AI agents, promoting them as a simple and effective way to automate busywork. Like many other agents, Business AI specializes in analyzing and integrating with the context of the business deploying it; the system automatically assesses a brand's preexisting online presence to modify its outputs. Also: How autonomous businesses succeed by engaging with the world Eligible businesses can now access Meta's new agent for free via Meta Ads. It's also available "at a fraction of the cost of other solutions," Meta wrote in a company blog post, for businesses based in the US that want to add it to their website, or to their WhatsApp and Messenger accounts, with availability in more countries expected soon. (A company spokesperson declined to provide additional details around the agent's pricing structure.) Alongside this product release, Meta had some news about its user experience and personalization policy. Starting Dec. 16, the company will begin using individual users' interactions with its Meta AI chatbot to customize the ads and content recommendations they see on Facebook and Instagram, the company announced Wednesday. Someone asking one of Meta's chatbots about local dining options, for example, might start seeing ads for nearby restaurants on Meta platforms. There's no opt-out option for the new personalization changes, Meta said in its announcement. You always have the option of not interacting with the company's chatbots while using its apps, of course, but the company is also reportedly working on chatbots that proactively strike up a conversation with users. Also: My new favorite Photoshop AI tool lets me combine images in one click - and I can't stop Some conversation topics won't be included as training data, including anything that covers sexual orientation, health, race, religion, or political views. Chats that take place before Dec. 16 also won't be used, and the personalization changes will not initially apply to users in the UK, South Korea, or the European Union, a Meta spokesperson confirmed to ZDNET. While Meta said it won't start using chat data for targeting ads until Dec. 16, it's hard not to see a relationship between the company's increased in-house personalization via AI and the launch of external AI personalization tools for businesses. It's unclear what the relationship will be between user chat data and the models powering external tools for advertisers. Meta also announced Thursday that it was launching more AI tools to help businesses create ads on Advantage+, its AI-powered social media ad campaign management platform. There's a new AI-generated music feature, for example, which, according to Meta, "understands the content of an ad and produces unique, custom music that reflects the product, style, and sentiment -- helping brands better engage their audiences and connect in new ways." Also: Meta wants AI to automate every step of the ad production process - report The company also introduced AI dubbing for quick translation to reach international audiences, a tool for generating higher-quality AI-generated videos in ads, and another that generates a set of images curated to different audience demographics. The new features build on a broader offering of generative AI tools for advertisers, which Meta first began rolling out in October 2023, during the company's so-called "Year of Efficiency," which centered on -- among other initiatives -- internal layoffs and a shift in focus toward AI. While Meta pushes new AI tools to businesses to help them sell products, the company is also working towards automating the entirety of the advertising production process, from ideation to campaign launch -- although it isn't totally clear at this point what such comprehensive automation might look like in practice. Also: The work AI should really be doing, according to these pros Similarly, Amazon unveiled an agent last month that can assist with every step of creating a short video ad, including the generation of custom voiceovers.

Meta wants to bring its Business AI chat tools to third-party websites

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks as he presents the new Meta Ray-Ban Display at the 2025 Meta Connect conference in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 17, 2025. Meta's efforts to expand its core business from online advertising involves pitching companies AI-powered chat tools that they can use on their own websites. The social media giant debuted on Thursday a digital assistant dubbed Business AI, describing the software as a way for companies to offer to their customers more personalized product recommendations and faster ways to buy goods via chat interactions. Online retailers can use the Business AI digital assistant across apps like Facebook and Instagram as well as their own websites that are powered by Shopify, Meta said. The new company-focused AI assistant represents another way Meta is trying to make a make a big business incorporating generative AI, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing billions of dollars into. It also comes amid a wave of tech companies offering advanced digital assistants called AI agents that can streamline tedious, repetitive tasks. Amazon, for instance, debuted in September an AI agent that third-party merchants can use for their online businesses. "We are going beyond ads and beyond Meta to help businesses drive impact across their customer experiences and customer operations," Meta's head of business AI Clara Shih said during a press briefing. Shih said that the Business AI digital assistant will be free for companies to incorporate into their Meta ads so their customers can ask product-related questions and more easily purchase items by interacting with the Facebook and Instagram advertisements. If those companies want to use the Meta Business AI assistant on their own websites, they will have to pay a yet-to-be-determined price that Shih said will be cheaper than other "market alternatives." "We're entering a new AI product category that makes our ads better," Shih said. The Business AI digital assistant will also be available on WhatsApp and Messenger later this month in Mexico and the Philippines, with more markets coming down the line, Shih said. If companies use the Business AI digital assistant across Meta apps and their retail-oriented websites, Shih explained that the software should presumably provide better responses to users that correspond to their product-related inquiries. Shih said that Meta is partnering with companies like her former employer Salesforce, as well as Microsoft, ServiceNow, Zendesk and others to provide customer relationship management services and chatbots as part of its business AI push. "The best analogy is if you, as a customer, ask a salesperson about warranty information or a return," Shih said about the way Meta's Business AI software would work alongside third-part chat apps focusing on customer support. "Often, they'll walk you over to the customer service desk to handle those more complicated requests." Meta previously spent $1 billion in 2020 to buy the enterprise CRM startup Kustomer, but then spun it out in 2023 as an independent company during the social media giant's "year of efficiency." The company also debuted another tool called the Meta AI business assistant, which is intended for its advertisers to access for account problems and learn how their ad campaigns are performing.

Meta Pitches AI Chat Service to Third-Party Websites | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. The Facebook owner on Thursday (Oct. 2) unveiled "Business AI," an AI assistant designed to help companies offer customers more personalized product recommendations and quicker ways to purchase items through chat conversations. Retailers can employ the tool on Shopify-powered websites and apps such as Instagram and Facebook. "We are going beyond ads and beyond Meta to help businesses drive impact across their customer experiences and customer operations," Meta's head of business AI, Clara Shih, told reporters during a press briefing, per CNBC. Shih added that the Business AI digital assistant will be free for companies to weave into their Meta ads so customers can ask product-related questions and more easily make purchases by interacting with the ads on Facebook and Instagram. Companies that wish to use the Meta Business AI assistant on their own websites will have to pay a yet-to-be-determined price that Shih said will cost less than other "market alternatives." "We're entering a new AI product category that makes our ads better," Shih said. Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that AI-powered shopping adoption is already gaining traction among younger and middle-aged consumers, with around one-third of all respondents saying they either have used or would use generative AI for online purchases. "Overall, 32% of people surveyed said they used gen AI for shopping," PYMNTS wrote in August. "The use case reporting the highest percentage was work at 40%, followed by creative endeavors and educational purposes." "Your interactions with content on Facebook and Instagram have long shaped what appears in your feed," the company wrote on its blog. "Just like other personalized services, we tailor the ads and content you see based on your activity, ensuring that your experience evolves as your interests change. Many people expect their interactions to make what they see more relevant. Soon, interactions with AIs will be another signal we use to improve people's experience."

Meta Unveils Business AI Agent to Reinvent Customer Service

Meta has taken a bold step toward shaping online commerce and customer engagement. On October 2, 2025, the tech giant announced its Business AI, a generative AI agent that is designed to help brands automate customer service and guide product discovery. Additionally, it aims to drive conversions across Meta's platforms as well as external websites. The that the new AI agent is designed to provide businesses with personalized assistance across all the Meta platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and third-party websites. This revelation hints at an intensifying race in AI-driven agentic commerce.