Meta Platforms is expanding AI support for WhatsApp, adding voice calling to customers for enterprise accounts, a feature that’s been available to small businesses for years. “In the coming weeks, larger businesses using the WhatsApp Business Platform will be able to receive a call from a customer when they want to talk to someone live or call a customer directly” on request. Meta announced in Miami at its fourth annual Conversations business messaging conference, saying the move “paves the way for AI-enabled voice support in the future.” The company also added WhatsApp to centralized marketing across Facebook and Instagram.

“Companies of all sizes” can, once onboarded, use Ads Manager to manage the same creative, setup flows and budgets in one place across the three platforms, Meta explains in a blog post.

Meta is also expanding the availability of Business AIs in Mexico. Meta introduced Business AIs in mid-2024. The company says it is exploring a turnkey Business AI “that can make personalized product recommendations and facilitate sales on any business’ website — then follow up with customers to answer questions or provide updates right in a WhatsApp chat.”

WhatsApp Business now has more than 200 million monthly users worldwide and is a significant revenue driver, TechCrunch points out, noting that “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.”

Meta has a form businesses can fill out and submit to get started with calling on the WhatsApp Business Platform.

The centralized marketing lets businesses upload their subscriber list and either manually or using Advantage+ select marketing messages for additional WhatsApp placement and have Meta’s AI-powered algorithms “optimize budgets across placements to maximize performance.”

Soon businesses who want to create ads in WhatsApp’s Status feed will be able to do that from Ads Manager too, Meta says.

Separate from its business suite, Meta AI is now available to summarize personal chats on WhatsApp for general users. “Instead of showing your messages, WhatsApp uses Meta AI to generate a bulleted summary of what you missed,” reports The Verge, noting that Meta is stressing privacy for the new feature on its encrypted WhatsApp platform and that the option is turned off by default.

“The feature is rolling out in English in the U.S., with plans to launch in more countries and languages later this year,” writes The Verge, explaining that “it uses Meta’s Private Processing technology, which the company claims will prevent it and other third parties from snooping.”