WhatsApp Is Walking a Tightrope Between AI Features and Privacy
1 min read
Summary
Meta-owned WhatsApp will integrate cloud-based AI tools over the coming weeks, with the AI functions preserved within the app’s end-to-end encryption.
Users will be able to access message summarisation and composition tools, while a new feature called ‘Advanced Chat Privacy’ will allow users to prevent people they are chatting with from using the AI tools in shared communications if they wish.
The new AI features have been designed with a platform specifically created to process data for AI tasks without the information being accessible to Meta, WhatsApp, or any other party, known as Private Processing.
This uses special hardware to isolate sensitive data in a “Trusted Execution Environment”, and has been praised by researchers, although some have voiced concern that the move could put WhatsApp on a “slippery slope”
WhatsApp claims the AI will help users who want to use these tools without having to switch to a less-private platform to access them.
