Meta Sells AI Agent for Businesses in Push to Monetize Service

Meta Platforms Inc. is selling businesses access to an artificial intelligence agent for the first time, its latest effort to generate revenue to offset the company’s hefty AI investments.

The social media giant will begin charging some customers for what it calls Meta Business Agent beginning Wednesday, according to a company spokesperson. The agent’s main functionality is chatting with a business’s customers over WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, the spokesperson said.

Larger businesses that use the agent will pay Meta for the data used to power it, known as tokens. Smaller businesses will also have to pay for the agent via ...