Meta Adds Ephemeral 'Incognito Chat' Mode to WhatsApp AI Assistant

Meta Platforms is rolling out a new Incognito Chat feature for its artificial intelligence assistant on WhatsApp. The company announced the feature on Wednesday. Incognito Chat is powered by Meta's private processing technology, which debuted a year ago.

It already underlies WhatsApp's existing AI features including message summarization and composition tools. Incognito chats ensure conversations remain invisible to anyone, including Meta. With the feature, WhatsApp will only be able to see that an account used it.

Conversations in Incognito Chat are not saved. The chats are ephemeral by default.

"Your conversations are not saved and by default, your messages disappear — giving you a space to think and explore ideas without anyone watching," Meta Platforms said in a statement. Incognito Chat is currently text-only at launch. Users cannot upload images in Incognito Chat for now, though support for image processing and voice recognition is in the works, according to Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp.

The AI in Incognito Chat includes built-in safety guardrails. It will refuse to answer problematic questions or steer conversations in different directions. Incognito Chat uses end-to-end encryption.

It handles all AI inference in a Trusted Execution Environment that ensures messages are not accessible to Meta. Mark Zuckerberg announced the new Incognito Chat feature.

Zuckerberg added that other apps have introduced incognito-style modes but they can still see the questions coming in and the answers going out. He further noted that conversations on the phone disappear when users exit the session.

"This is different from other disappearing AI products where your conversations logs often remain on other companies' servers for many months," Zuckerberg said. Google keeps data from temporary chats in Gemini for up to 72 hours. Temporary chats in ChatGPT can be stored for up to 30 days, while incognito chats in Claude are kept for a minimum of 30 days.

Meta plans to introduce Side Chat with Meta AI in the coming months. The feature, announced alongside Incognito Chat, will allow users to get private assistance within any chat on WhatsApp. Side Chat integrates the ability to message with Meta AI about a text chat a user is having with another person or group.

It aims to let users ask for suggestions or summaries without sharing sensitive details. Incognito Chat will roll out over the coming months in both WhatsApp and the Meta AI app. Meta is also adding it as an option in the Meta AI app.

The feature includes an option on by default but that can be turned off to allow the AI model to search the web in an anonymized way for up-to-date information. Meta invites third-party audits and vulnerability reports on Private Processing. Incognito Chat is going to be subject to expert oversight so third parties can verify that the code Meta ships for the feature is durable.

WhatsApp has more than 3 billion users around the world. Will Cathcart, Head of WhatsApp, said, "We're starting to ask a lot of meaningful questions about our lives with AI systems.