Artificial intelligence bots are coming to Facebook's Messenger app, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today at the company's F8 developers conference in San Francisco.

Developers now have access to a beta Messenger platform that will allow them to develop bots that can deliver customer support, suggest products, book travel, and order food, among other interactive experiences.

"I've never met anyone who likes calling a business," Zuckerberg said. "We think that there's got to be a better way to do this."

The new Messenger platform will have two components: autonomous bots as well as an API that allows company representatives to send and receive scheduled and live messages within the app. The bots are designed to replace a lot of communications that consumers typically receive via email, like shipping notifications and purchase receipts.

Facebook has already tested the feature with select partners, including 1-800-FLOWERS, which has been working on a bot that will allow flowers to be ordered and paid for entirely within Messenger.

"I can guarantee you you're going to spend way more money than you want on this," said Facebook's messaging chief, David Marcus, as he showed off the ordering process.

The API, called the Send/Receive API, will support individual messages as well as interactive "bubbles" that companies can use in their marketing efforts. Much like targeted ads on websites, they'll be able to send suggested products and other marketing messages directly to Messenger users. Companies will even be able to look up the Messenger accounts of people who have shared phone numbers with them through mailing list subscriptions.

In a tacit acknowledgment that such targeted messaging may annoy some consumers or raise privacy concerns, Marcus explained that users will have the ability to block types of messages or all messages coming from a specific bot.

Messenger's bot features come two weeks after Microsoft unveiled its own vision for artificial intelligence at its developers conference.