Meta adds business voice calling to WhatsApp, explores AI-powered product recommendations

WhatsApp is adding more AI features to its business suite. The company on Tuesday announced it’s introducing the ability for large businesses to reach customers through voice calls, which will allow the app to explore the use of AI-powered voice agents.

The company is also looking into using AI to recommend products to users.

WhatsApp Business, which has over 200 million monthly users, has been a notable revenue driver for Meta, as its executives noted in the last few quarterly earnings calls. The company earns money through its click-to-WhatsApp ads and charges merchants for messaging features on the platform.

While the company doesn’t charge for its AI features at the moment, there is a possibility that it could put a price tag on that after it achieves scale.

Today, small business accounts can already chat with customers over voice on WhatsApp, but larger business accounts haven’t yet had the ability. In the next few weeks, larger businesses will be able to access this feature via the API. This will allow customers to place voice calls to businesses and allow businesses to call back customers. (The latter wasn’t available during earlier tests last year, but is now.)

WhatsApp said it will soon add a way for customers to send and receive voice messages from businesses, too.

By enabling voice pipelines, companies could set up an AI-enabled voice agent through a startup like Vapi, ElevenLabs, Coval, or Phonic to run their customer service over WhatsApp.

In addition, an AI-powered chat-based customer support and outreach feature that began testing last year is now being expanded to more merchants in Mexico.

In addition, WhatsApp is looking to AI to power product recommendations on a merchant’s site.

Today, there are multiple venture-backed startups that are using AI to fuel personalized product suggestions for sellers. Similarly, Meta said after an initial recommendation or conversation, its AI could answer follow-up questions or provide updates via WhatsApp.

The updates are rolling out starting today to business customers with the general release and will reach the wider user base over the coming weeks.