Can AI answer WhatsApp messages in Arabic?
Yes, and Arabic script is the easy part. What breaks most tools here is M3arrab, which is Arabic typed in Latin letters, and the habit everyone has of switching language halfway through a sentence. Send a tool three messages before you buy it: one in Arabic, one in English, and one that reads like kifak, addesh el se3r?
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How people actually message a business here
Nobody picks a language and sticks to it. A customer opens in Arabic, asks the price in English because that is how they think about numbers, and signs off with a word in French. In one message.
Then there is M3arrab. Arabic written in Latin letters, because that is faster on a phone keyboard. fiye ekhod maw3ad. addesh el se3r. kifak. It has no fixed spelling, so the same word arrives ten different ways from ten different people, and a tool that was trained to expect either Arabic or English sees neither.
This is not an edge case in Beirut. It is most of the inbox.
The three messages that tell you everything
Before you sign anything, send the demo these, in this order.
One in clean Arabic. Almost everything passes this, so it proves very little on its own.
One in M3arrab. This is where you find out whether anybody building the thing has ever worked in this region. If it answers in English about something unrelated, or asks you to rephrase, you have your answer.
One that switches mid sentence. Something like hi, badde a2fol el reservation for tomorrow please. A tool that handles this is one that was built for the way people here type rather than translated into it.
Replying in the language they wrote in
There is a decision underneath this that most tools get wrong, and it is not technical.
If somebody writes to you in M3arrab and gets a reply in formal written Arabic, it reads like being answered by a government form. If they write in Arabic and get English back, it reads like they have been put through to a different department. The right behaviour is to answer in the register they used, which means Latin letters back if they came in Latin letters.
Ours does that. It is a small thing that people notice immediately and never mention.
What it still gets wrong
Voice notes are a different problem and worth asking about separately, because a lot of customers here would rather record ten seconds than type.
Heavy dialect at speed can go wrong, and so can a name spelled a way the assistant has not seen. The useful question is not whether it ever misreads, because it will. It is what happens next. Ours hands the conversation to a person rather than guessing, and you get told.
Do not take our word for it.
Send it something in Arabic, something in English, and something like addesh el se3r. See which one it fumbles.
- What is M3arrab?
- Arabic typed in Latin letters, often with numbers standing in for sounds, like 3 for the letter ain. It is how a lot of people message on a phone and it has no standard spelling.
- Will it answer in Arabic script or Latin letters?
- Whichever the customer used. Someone who writes in M3arrab gets M3arrab back, because a formal Arabic reply to a casual message reads like a form letter.
- Does it handle French too?
- Yes. Plenty of conversations here run in French, or start in French and finish in Arabic, and that is treated as normal rather than as an error.
- What about voice notes?
- Ask us about your case. Text is solid. Voice is a separate piece of work and we would rather scope it than promise it in a sentence.
Tell us what you are trying to work out and we will answer it straight, including when the answer is that you do not need us.
Or email hello@ahlelak.com