WhatsApp Introduces Incognito Mode for Meta AI Chats

Meta announced on Wednesday that it is introducing the ability to initiate "incognito" conversations with its Meta AI chatbot within WhatsApp. The company stated that these chats will be processed within a secure environment and will not be visible to anyone else.

Users can start an incognito session by tapping a new icon within their one-on-one chats with Meta AI. This feature will also be available on the standalone Meta AI app.

The rollout of incognito chats for WhatsApp and the Meta AI app will occur over the coming months.

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According to Meta, these incognito conversations are not saved, and messages will disappear by default once the chat is closed. The session will also end if you close the app or lock your phone, causing Meta AI to lose the context of that specific conversation.

"People are increasingly using AI for all kinds of tasks, including their most private thoughts—whether it's navigating financial or health matters, or seeking advice on how to handle a difficult message from a friend or colleague. We believe it's crucial to provide a way for people to ask these questions with the highest level of privacy possible," Alice Newton-Rex, VP of Product at WhatsApp, explained to TechCrunch during a call.

The company has been developing the infrastructure for secure AI chats on WhatsApp for some time. Last year, it outlined a private processing system designed to enable AI features without compromising end-to-end encryption. Since then, WhatsApp has introduced capabilities like AI-generated message summaries using this architecture.

Newton-Rex noted that while previous features utilized smaller models, the new incognito chat is powered by Meta's latest Muse Spark model, which was released last month.

Meta is already developing its next feature leveraging this private processing infrastructure. Called Side Chat, it will allow users to privately invoke Meta AI within a group chat to ask questions and receive answers without notifying or revealing the interaction to other participants.

Currently, users must tag a message and direct a question to the AI assistant, generating a response visible to everyone in the chat. To ask a question privately, one must copy and paste the text into a separate chat window.

Incognito or private modes are also offered by ChatGPT and Claude, while companies like DuckDuckGo and Proton have launched their own privacy-focused chatbots.

Meta's push for private AI conversations is timely. Last month, Reuters reported legal opinions suggesting that users' conversations with AI chatbots could potentially be used as evidence in legal proceedings.