Meta announced on Wednesday that its new secret chat feature will let users interact with its AI chatbot on WhatsApp and the Meta AI app in what the company describes as a secure environment. The social media giant is introducing this feature as a way for users to freely discuss sensitive topics like health, finance or career advice with Meta AI without worrying that their conversations can be seen by someone else.
“Other apps have introduced secret-style modes, but they can still see incoming questions and outgoing replies. Secret Chat with Meta AI is truly private, meaning no one – not even Meta – can read your conversations,” the company said in a blog post.
The feature builds on WhatsApp’s private processing technology, which Meta introduced last year to enable such optional AI privacy features. Essentially, the system lets users request a supposedly confidential and secure environment to process their AI interactions.
In the case of secret chats, users can initiate a private, temporary conversation with Meta AI that encrypts their messages and then processes them in a secure environment that Meta claims it cannot access. The company says those conversations are not saved by default and the messages disappear automatically.
The feature is expected to roll out on WhatsApp and Meta AI apps in the coming months.
Meta has also teased another feature it’s calling SideChat, which uses the same private processing technology to let users use Meta AI privately in WhatsApp conversations without disrupting the main chat. In practice, this will allow users to ask meta AI questions or summarize their interactions with real people
The timing of these new features is somewhat notable. This comes less than a week after Meta stopped supporting encrypted direct messages on Instagram.
The company said on the Instagram support page that end-to-end encrypted messaging on Instagram will not be supported after May 8. Users with affected conversations should see instructions for saving any media or messages they wish to keep.
Meta also pointed users to WhatsApp if they want to continue using encrypted messaging.
“For other end-to-end encrypted chat options on Meta, check out WhatsApp,” the page reads.
A Meta spokesperson told PCMag at the time that the decision was made because “few people were opting for end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs.”
The spokesperson said users who want to continue messaging with end-to-end encryption can “easily do so on WhatsApp.”
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