Google Assistant Can Now Make WhatsApp Voice and Video Calls

Google, has today announced that the Google Assistant is now even more tightly integrated with WhatsApp. Users will now be able to make voice calls and video calls through WhatsApp by just asking the Virtual Assistant to do it.

You can say something like “Hey Google, WhatsApp video Alvine” to make a WhatsApp video call. Up until now, the WhatsApp integration in the Google Assistant was barebones to say the least; users could ask the Assistant to send a WhatsApp text message to their contacts, but that was about it. With this new change, Google has given users one more reason to use the Assistant more often in everyday scenarios since WhatsApp is used by over 1 billion people.

While Google has already announced the feature, it looks like it’s either not rolling out yet, or just hasn’t rolled out widely enough. A quick test on my phone revealed that the Google Assistant and WhatsApp integration was not yet working with the Assistant simply responding with “I can’t make WhatsApp calls yet”. That’s slightly disappointing, and Google hasn’t really given a timeline on when to expect these features to arrive.