Guide · AI · For the owner about to switch on Meta's agent

What you agree to when you switch on Meta's AI agent: the Business Agent terms in plain language

Turning on Meta's AI agent for your WhatsApp chats takes a few taps, and those taps accept a set of terms most owners never open. Meta's terms for its business agents say what Meta may do with your chats and your website, what the agent may do in your name, and who answers for what it says. Here are the points an owner should know, in plain language.

Published 9 October 2026

What the terms cover

Meta's Business Agents and Platform Terms of Service were last updated on 16 July 2026. They apply when a business uses Meta Business Agent, the platform and connectors around it, and Meta's assistants for business purposes, which the terms say include selling products, customer support and setting up a product catalog. Using the agent means the company you represent agrees to them, alongside Meta's other terms and policies.

Not legal advice

This guide paraphrases Meta's terms so an owner knows what to look for. It is not legal advice, it leaves parts out, and the full terms are the ones that count. Read them, or ask a lawyer, before you rely on any point.

What Meta may do with what you give it

A licence to your material: Everything you give the agent, from text and pictures to documents and voice recordings, is called Input. You keep ownership of it, but the terms give Meta a worldwide licence to use it, without royalties, that continues after the terms end.
Improving Meta's AI: Meta may use the content, meaning what goes in and what comes out, to provide and improve its services, including its AI models, and may do so through automated or human review and through outside vendors.
After the agent hands a chat to you: When the agent hands a chat over to your team, the terms say it goes quiet in that conversation but may continue to observe what is shared, and that content still counts as content under the terms.
Your website: Meta may crawl, index and analyse the web pages linked to your products or services, and pull updates from them regularly, for the agent, your ads or your marketing messages.
What customers write: The terms note that Meta has its own separate rights from customers to the content they share in chats with the agent.
Questions you ask Meta's assistant: When you use Meta's Business AI assistant, Meta may share your questions with outside services, such as a search engine, to give a more useful answer, and those services follow their own privacy policies.

What you allow the agent to do

To run the agent, the terms say you authorise Meta to switch off or hide your website's pop-ups or web chat where the agent is deployed, including inside the browser built into Meta's apps, and to write and send messages to customers on Meta's apps on your behalf, without waiting for them to write first.

Our reading: check what the agent may start

If the agent can open a conversation in your name, look at what it may say before you switch it on, and remember that a customer arriving from Meta's apps may not see your own website chat at all.

If you connect your own records: the addendum at the end

The same page ends with an addendum for linking the agent to the systems you keep your business records in. Where it applies in your region, it says you instruct Meta, acting on your behalf as your processor, to connect to those systems, read and update the records there in line with what customers ask, build customer profiles for you, place test orders while checking the connection, and send customers notifications based on what they did on your website before they reached the agent. The records it counts include your help pages, staff training material, sample past chats and, on the WhatsApp Business app, your contact lists and earlier chat history when you share them during setup. You also promise you have the rights to let Meta use all of it.

Who answers for what it says

Meta gives no promise that the agent's answers are complete, accurate or lawful. The terms warn that output may be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, offensive or inappropriate, and say it should not be relied on for medical, financial, legal or pharmaceutical advice or decisions. Where you let the agent act or publish on your behalf, you accept sole responsibility for what it does, and the terms say that you, not Meta, are responsible to your customers. Meta also limits its own liability.

Two more duties sit with you. You must not present AI output as written by a person when it was not, or remove a watermark from it. And if you give the agent pictures, video or voice recordings of people, you confirm you have their permission for that processing.

Our reading: decide what a person must answer

Before switching the agent on, list the questions only a person should answer, such as prices you negotiate, refunds and anything about health, and route them to your team. How handing chats over works in the app is in our guide to sharing the inbox with Meta's AI agent.

Fees, ending it, and keeping quiet

Fees: Use may carry fees that Meta tells you about, on its pricing page or in the product. Meta can introduce or change fees after giving notice; if you do not agree, you stop using the affected feature before they apply, and carrying on counts as accepting them.
Ending it: Either side can end the terms with 30 days' written notice, or at once for a serious breach. Meta can also suspend or disable access if it decides you broke its terms, and can discontinue features. When the agent is switched off, your other Meta products carry on under their own terms.
Public announcements: The terms say you will not make public announcements about Business Agents without Meta's prior written approval, and treat non-public information about the product as confidential.

Questions

Can Meta's AI agent use our WhatsApp contacts and old chats?

The addendum at the end of Meta's Business Agents terms lists contact lists and earlier chat history on the WhatsApp Business app among the records a business may share with Meta when setting up the agent, alongside help pages, training material and sample chats. Where the addendum applies, Meta handles them on the business's instructions. Read the terms in full; this is not legal advice.

Does Meta use our WhatsApp chats with its AI agent to train its AI?

Meta's Business Agents terms say Meta may use the content that goes into and comes out of the agent to provide and improve its services, including its AI models, through automated or human review and outside vendors. Read the terms in full before relying on this summary; it is not legal advice.

Does Meta's AI agent stop reading a chat after it hands it to us?

It stops replying. The terms say that after the agent hands a chat to the business it is muted in that conversation but may continue to observe what is shared, and that content counts as content under the terms.

Who is responsible if Meta's AI agent gives a customer a wrong answer?

The business. Meta's terms say it makes no promise that the agent's output is accurate, and that the business, not Meta, is responsible to its users for what the agent says and does on its behalf.

Can we stop using Meta's AI agent later?

Yes. The terms say either side can end them with 30 days' written notice, and that switching the agent off does not end your use of Meta's other products.

Sources

Meta: Meta Business Agents and Platform Terms of Service (last updated 16 July 2026), read 9 October 2026.

What the agent can do day to day is in our guide to Meta's AI agent on your WhatsApp number. More plain-language notes like this one are on the guides page.

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