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WhatsApp Launches Incognito Chat Feature With Meta AI
WhatsApp introduced Incognito Chat on Wednesday, allowing users to converse with Meta AI without Meta accessing the content. The feature builds on the company's Private Processing technology and uses a Trusted Execution Environment. Conversations are ephemeral by default and disappear after the session ends.
May 13, 10:00 AM·2m read5 sources
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WhatsApp announced on Wednesday it is launching Incognito Chat, a feature that runs AI inference inside a Trusted Execution Environment so that Meta cannot access users' conversations with its AI chatbot. The system relies on the company's Private Processing scheme, introduced a year ago, which already supports features such as message summarization.
Meta said Incognito Chat is ephemeral by default and conversations disappear once a user exits the session. WhatsApp head Will Cathcart told WIRED the company may develop an option to retain conversation history for users who want it. The feature is currently text-only, with image processing and voice recognition capabilities in development.
Cathcart described the engineering challenge as building something in a data center that has the security properties of a giant phone without giving Meta the passcode. Reducing latency through optimized routing was critical to making the experience usable given the added demands of the secure environment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post that he is proud Meta Superintelligence Labs is the first lab to deliver private AI. The company is also adding Incognito Chat as an option in the Meta AI app. A related feature called Side Chat with Meta AI lets users ask the chatbot about an ongoing conversation with friends or a group without sharing that context directly.
Meta invites third-party audits and vulnerability reports on Private Processing. The company said Incognito Chat itself will undergo expert oversight to verify the durability of its code. " With more than 3 billion users worldwide, Incognito Chat could give many people their first experience interacting with an AI chatbot.
Most generative AI platforms offer some form of incognito mode. Zuckerberg highlighted that conversations on the phone disappear when the session ends. The rollout comes as Meta eliminated opt-in end-to-end encryption from Instagram Direct Messages this week after years of promising default encryption.
