Meta chief product officer Chris Cox said Wednesday that the social networking giant’s upcoming Llama 4 artificial intelligence software will help power AI agents, the latest trend in generative AI.

Cox discussed the next version of Meta’s open-source AI software for developers during a public interview at Morgan Stanley’s technology, media and telecom conference in San Francisco. AI agents are typically defined by their ability to conduct multi-step tasks instead of generating responses to written prompts, and Cox said in the interview that Llama 4 will have reasoning capabilities and create AI agents capable of using a web browser and other tools.

Later during the interview, Cox described how more advanced AI models can be used to underpin AI agents so they can complete specific business-related tasks, such as automatically filing receipts.

“I mean, how much time do we spend typing in things from an image we’re looking at into a computer: a lot,” Cox said. “Having it understand all of them automatically is a huge deal from a friction perspective.”

His comments follow similar statements made by Clara Shih, Meta’s head of business AI, who told CNBC’s Julia Boorstin Wednesday that the company believes more businesses will use AI agents to automate complex tasks.

“We already have these trusted relationships with 200 million small businesses around the world,” Shih said. “Very soon, each of those businesses are going to have these AIs that represent them and help automate redundant tasks, help speak in their voice, help them find more customers and provide almost like a concierge service to every single one of their customers, 24/7.”

Meta will host its first LlamaCon AI conference on April 29.

Last week, CNBC reported that the social networking company will debut a standalone Meta AI app during the second quarter.

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