What is AI Chat?
AI Chat is a multimodal AI agent that moves between voice and chat without losing context.
The same AI agent you've already built for voice can now switch to and from text, right in your web chat widget. This is SignalWire’s AI Chat, and it's the first step toward one AI agent that follows your customer across channels instead of starting over every time they switch.
The current problem with disconnected conversational AI platforms
Most "AI chat" today means a chatbot vendor bolted onto your site, a separate conversational AI platform with no connection to whatever happens when that same customer picks up the phone. The conversation your customer had in the widget is gone the moment they dial in. They re-explain themselves. You lose context. It feels like they’re contacting two different companies, not one.
Use cases
A scoped customer service AI agent for order status
AI Chat is not meant to be an open-ended assistant trying to handle anything a contact might ask.
A good first build is small and scoped, focusing on a specific function within AI customer support software. Take an order-status agent: a customer asks where their package is, the agent looks it up and answers, all inside the chat widget on your site. If that same customer later calls in, the same agent picks up the thread, no re-explaining, no separate bot to maintain.
AI customer support software for billing
A customer is contacting an AI chat agent about a billing issue, but it's the kind of thing that needs a phone call to sort out. The customer calls in and moves the conversation to voice, but nothing resets. The account number, the issue, everything already covered in the chat is still there. The customer doesn't repeat themselves; they just start talking instead of typing.
AI appointment scheduling and confirmation
A customer books an appointment over a call with the agent. Once it's confirmed, the agent sends the address as text in the same conversation (the way you'd text someone a photo instead of describing it) rather than making them jot it down mid-call.
Warm transfer to a human agent
Sometimes a conversation needs a person, not just a mode switch. When that happens, AI Chat can warm transfer to a human agent. The handoff comes with the context already attached, not a blind transfer. Instead of a customer repeating their issue to whoever picks up, the human agent gets briefed automatically: "This is John, he has a billing problem, here are the six things I tried."
One thing worth noting about AI Chat
This is chat, not SMS. AI Chat runs inside the SignalWire chat product embedded on your site. It doesn't send or receive text messages, and it's not WhatsApp.
How AI Chat works
SignalWire’s AI Chat closes the gap between communication channels. It's the same agent definition, with the same tools, the same browser control through the Client SDK, running as text inside the chat widget as it does on a call. It’s one customer service AI agent with one memory, regardless of which channel your customer picks up. It’s your same existing voice agent definition, extended into text.
Get started with AI Chat
AI Chat runs on your existing SignalWire account. Pricing is $0.005 per turn to start, billed independently, no carrier minutes involved. If you already have an agent built for voice, embedding it as a chat agent is the fastest way to see the mode switch for yourself: build something small and scoped, like an order-status lookup, and watch it move between voice and text without losing the thread.
That's what defines a true multimodal AI agent: One agent, one memory, and a conversation that doesn't reset when the channel does.
Get started with AI Chat today by creating a free SignalWire account, and bring your questions to our developer community on Discord.
