Meta gives AI agents access to WhatsApp Business tools

Meta has announced a new feature that allows artificial intelligence agents to perform a number of routine tasks related to setting up and managing the WhatsApp Business service, with the aim of simplifying companies' use of the platform.

The announcement came as Meta unveiled new AI-focused subscription plans, allowing companies to choose their preferred AI agent and request WhatsApp Business settings to be implemented through a simple chat describing the required tasks.

According to a report published by TechCrunch, setting up the service required developers to navigate multiple tools and services, including the Developer Console, Meta Business Manager, API Reference, and Code Editor. Now, the developer can describe tasks to the AI agent to take over a large part of the setup steps.

The feature is based on WhatsApp Business Tools MCP, a server based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP) protocol that connects AI programming agents such as Claude, Cursor, Codex, and ChatGPT, to the WhatsApp Business platform.

The agent can perform tasks that include creating a WhatsApp Business account, adding and verifying a phone number, registering an account to access the Cloud API, reviewing terms of service, preparing and testing messages, creating and editing message templates, testing Webhooks, and diagnosing some of the issues associated with payment and business verification.

WhatsApp Business Tools MCP is an expansion of Meta's strategy to use MCP servers, which allows AI agents to interact with third-party services and tools rather than just providing text answers.

Meta also provides another server, Meta Social Technologies MCP, which helps detect API hotspots, search technical documentation, and diagnose errors.

The move is not limited to Meta, as other tech companies, including PayPal, Stripe, GitHub, Notion, Slack, Salesforce, Atlassian, X, Google, and Microsoft, have started providing MCP servers for their services.

This feature reflects a growing trend towards transforming AI agents from tools for answering questions and writing code to assistants capable of performing actual tasks within digital platforms and services, reducing the time developers spend on routine and complex work.

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