Meta is adding an incognito mode for conversations with its AI chatbot on WhatsApp. The feature will process chats in a secure environment where messages disappear automatically and can’t be seen by anyone else.
Users can start private AI sessions by tapping a new icon in one-on-one chats with Meta AI. The company announced the feature will also come to the standalone Meta AI app. Both platforms will get incognito mode over the next few months.
The timing matters. People increasingly turn to AI for their most personal questions – from health and financial advice to relationship guidance. Recent legal concerns about AI conversations being used in court cases make privacy protection more critical than ever.
The incognito sessions work differently from regular AI chats. Messages don’t get saved anywhere, and conversations vanish when you close the chat window. The session also ends if you close the app or lock your phone, which means Meta AI loses all context from that particular conversation.
“People are starting to use AI for everything, including some of their most private thoughts, whether that’s tackling financial or health questions, or for advice on how to respond to a tricky message from a friend or a colleague,” Alice Newton-Rex, VP of Product at WhatsApp, explained. “We think it’s really important to give people the ability to ask these questions as privately as possible.”
Meta has been building the infrastructure for secure AI features for over a year. The company detailed its private processing system in 2023, which allows AI features to work without breaking WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption. Previous features like AI-powered message summaries already use this architecture.
The new incognito mode runs on Meta’s latest Muse Spark model, released last month. This marks an upgrade from the smaller models that powered earlier AI features on the platform.
Meta is already working on another privacy-focused AI feature called Side Chat. This will let users ask Meta AI questions within group chats without other participants seeing the queries or responses. Currently, tagging Meta AI in group chats shows your question and the AI’s answer to everyone in the conversation.
The move puts WhatsApp in line with other major AI platforms. Both ChatGPT and Claude offer their own incognito modes. Privacy-focused companies like DuckDuckGo and Proton have also launched chatbots that prioritize user anonymity from the ground up.
The privacy push comes at a crucial moment for AI companies. Last month, Reuters reported that lawyers believe conversations with AI chatbots could potentially be used as evidence in legal proceedings. This legal uncertainty makes private AI chat modes more than just a nice-to-have feature – they’re becoming essential for user protection.
