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WhatsApp said On Wednesday, it will launch an AI chat function known as Incognito Chat that is designed to allow users to talk privately with it Meta artificial intelligence– So that Meta itself cannot access the questions or answers. The feature is built on WhatsApp Special processing systemwhich debuted a year ago and is already behind it WhatsApp Existing AI features, including message summarization and composition tools.
The idea of Incognito Chat is to create a way for WhatsApp to offer AI chat integration that doesn’t conflict with the communication platform’s commitment to end-to-end encryption, a privacy system through which only direct participants in a conversation can read messages or hear a call. Most productive AI platforms now offer some sort of “incognito mode,” but these features are typically designed to separate users from the questions they ask and the answers they receive rather than including a mechanism to fully protect those questions and answers from the service provider’s point of view. With the incognito chat feature, only WhatsApp will be able to know that the account is using this feature, according to Meta.
Meta is inviting third-party audits and vulnerability reports on private processing and says the incognito chat itself will undergo expert oversight so third parties can verify that the code Meta ships for the feature is robust. But as with any cloud system, chatting with Meta AI on WhatsApp will eventually involve trusting Meta in the same way WhatsApp is used to communicate.
“A big part of our work at WhatsApp is when there’s a perfect solution that’s very difficult to use — how do you give people other options that still provide them with privacy benefits?” WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart tells WIRED. “With AI, from a privacy standpoint, you might want to run everything on your own phone, but the benefit of these models is that you use more and more compute to make it work. So the challenge is how do you create something in a data center that doesn’t fit in your pocket but has the same kinds of security features. Incognito chat is kind of like we’re running a giant AI phone and we don’t have the passcode.”
Incognito chats are fleeting by default and will disappear once the conversation ends. Cathcart says WhatsApp may be developing an option under Special Processing to retain some or all of these conversations over time for users who want that history. Currently, incognito chat is text only. Cathcart says support for image processing and voice recognition is in the works. Reducing latency in any way possible, including by improving routing, was key to making incognito chat usable given the additional requirement of running AI within the secure cloud environment for private processing.
“Incognito Chat handles all AI inferences in a trusted execution environment that ensures your messages cannot be accessed by us,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Wednesday. “Conversations on your phone also disappear when you exit the session. This is different from other AI products that disappear where your chat logs often remain on other companies’ servers for months.”
Meta is also adding Incognito Chat as an option in the Meta AI app.
Another feature announced on Wednesday alongside incognito chat is “Side Chat with Meta AI,” which combines the ability to essentially directly message with Meta AI about a text chat you’re having with another person or group of people. The idea is to give users a way to ask the AI for restaurant suggestions or about a movie your friends are discussing without leaking those locations or interests to the company.