WhatsApp adds incognito mode to Meta AI chats

Meta on Wednesday said it is adding the ability to start “incognito” conversations with the Meta AI chatbot within WhatsApp. These discussions, the company said, will be conducted in a secure environment and will not be visible to anyone.

Users can activate the incognito mode by clicking on a new image for one-on-one chat with Meta AI. The company said this feature will also be available on the Meta AI standalone app.

Incognito chats will be available on WhatsApp with the Meta AI app in the next few months.

Meta said that these incognito conversations are not saved, and messages will disappear by default when you close the chat. The session will also end if you close the app or lock your phone, and Meta AI will lose your conversation, the company said.

“People are starting to use AI for everything, including their private thoughts, whether it’s answering financial or health questions, or advice on how to respond to a fake message from a friend or colleague. We think it’s really important to give people the ability to ask these questions as privately as possible,” Alice Newton-Rex, VP of Product at WhatsApp, told TechCrunch

The company has been laying the groundwork for secure AI chats on WhatsApp for some time. Last year, it detailed its privacy policy that would allow it to create AI features without it breaking the cover from end to end. Since then, WhatsApp has added features like Summary of AI-generated messages who use infrastructure.

Newton-Rex said that Meta used small versions to create its previous tools, but the new incognito chat uses the latest version of Muse Sparkwhich was released last month.

The company is already working on its own results that use its own private systems. Called Side Chat, it will allow users to invite Meta AI into the chat room to ask questions and get answers privately without informing or showing other people in the conversation.

At this point, you have to enter a message and ask a question to the AI ​​assistant to get an answer that other participants in the chat can see. If you want to ask a question privately, you need to put the word in a special chat window.

ChatGPT and Claude offer incognito versions, too, and companies like DuckDuckGo and Proton have launched their privacy-first chatbots.

Meta’s move to private chat AI comes at an important time. Last month, Reuters cited lawyers who decided that users’ Conversations with AI chatbots can be used against them in cases.