Facebook’s new Messenger robots will be able to message people when companies think that they’re not buying enough.
The site introduced its new chatbot platform at its F8 conference, proclaiming that it could change sales and customer service by allowing people to talk to artificially intelligent machines run by companies. But those same companies will be able to pay to send messages to people telling them to buy more things.
And all of those messages will be integrated into the Messenger platform, which people most commonly use to talk with friends. Facebook has pitched that platform as an entire – complete with news organizations and companies – but it is primarily used as a means of having personal and private conversations.
With the new chatbots, if a company is concerned that you haven’t chatted to it for a while, it will be able to send a sponsored message – reminding users that they exist, offering special deals, or highlighting products that a user might have Liked but hasn’t yet bought.
Facebook presented the new bots primarily as a way of chatting with companies to get help from them. But it will also be a way for the companies to get in touch with people to advertise to them.
Those sponsored messages will be limited in a number of ways, according to Facebook vice president David Marcus. Companies will only be able to contact people who are already customers or have been in contact with the business before, and users will be able to block future messages from specific businesses.
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