Meta has unveiled the latest updates to its WhatsApp Business platform, including a suite of new AI tools.

Revealed at Meta's Conversations event in Sao Paulo, the updates aim to facilitate better connections between businesses and customers, enabling more efficient and effective communication to cater to the evolving and increasingly demanding nature of customer service.

At the same time, the company rolled out a series of other, non-AI improvements to enhance its customer-business experience across the popular messaging app.

WhatsApp Business gets new AI capabilities

Meta has integrated AI capabilities into WhatsApp Business to assist companies in addressing customer inquiries more efficiently.

The AI tools are designed to respond to frequent questions, helping customers to find information quickly and easily.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in the event (via TechCrunch): “Our vision is not just to build a single AI assistant, but also to enable lots of different AIs that can serve different purposes, including for businesses. Any business should be able to quickly stand up an agent that can talk to your customers, provide support, and facilitate commerce.”

Besides enabling generative AI across more of its services, Meta also announced the rollout of Meta Verified for WhatsApp in other nations, including Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia.

The final update, which is set to be available for larger businesses in the coming months after a period of testing, will be the ability to call companies directly from the WhatsApp interface in order to discuss more complex or personal topics with a live agent.

Recent months have seen social media undergo a redefinition, with emerging technologies like AI and virtual reality as well as complex leadership situations causing unhappy users to find solutions elsewhere. Together with the blurring of boundaries between conventional social media platforms and other online collaboration and communication apps, Meta hopes that by giving customers a more personal-feeling experience, it help businesses and attract new users.

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