How to use Meta AI on WhatsApp

Meta AI on WhatsApp also has the same features as chatbots, chat with chatbots to answer any questions you have or even create AI images on Meta AI WhatsApp. Meta AI on WhatsApp will work separately as a chat like when you message others. Images created with Meta AI are also saved in a separate folder for easy management, download or you can forward AI images to others.

So with Meta AI on WhatsApp, you have more tools to support messaging in special cases, freely creating AI images.

Meta AI Will Soon Read Users' Unread WhatsApp Messages

WhatsApp just got a cool new trick: Meta AI will now peek into users' unread messages and give them a quick summary. Meta is advertising this as an optional feature that lives in the cloud but somehow remains private thanks to "Private Processing."

 

It sounds cool, but technically Meta AI is reading users' conversations, whether encrypted or not.

 

AI summary feature comes to WhatsApp

The feature is already available to some US users on the app. Open a conversation with unread messages and you'll see the usual flashing counter, this time with an AI badge that says Summarize Privately. Tap that badge and it will expand into a bulleted summary of your unread messages.

Message Summaries use Meta's Private Processing framework, which performs AI computations inside a hardware-backed Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) on Meta's cloud servers. Within that secure enclave, users' unread messages are decrypted, summarized by Meta AI, and then immediately deleted — supposedly never seen by anyone at Meta or stored in any database.

 

End-to-end encryption still protects your messages in transit. However, enabling Private Processing temporarily removes that encryption inside the safe zone, allowing AI to read your conversations. Outside that safe zone, everything remains encrypted, according to Meta.

Encrypted, but still exposed?

Cloud-based AI processing is always a concern. Assuming Meta itself doesn't collect data. Even a perfectly secure environment can be hacked or forced into legality.

While Meta claims it never stores user summaries, WhatsApp's backup history tells us that privacy isn't its top priority: As of September 2021, chat backups remain unencrypted on iCloud and Google Drive, meaning anyone with access to those clouds can read your entire chat archive.

This isn't the first time Meta's AI has run afoul of privacy. Not long ago, WhatsApp's AI assistant confidently gave a user's private phone number to a complete stranger to ask for train information. When confronted, the AI ​​refused, lied about the 'fictional' digits, and shirked responsibility.

Even if the AI ​​never hoards your actual messages, it silently collects metadata; tracking which conversations you ask for summaries for, how often you rely on it, and in what context you call for summaries.

That usage pattern is goldmine for creating behavioral profiles, outlining everything from the family stories you're most invested in to the work conversations you're ignoring.

 

The Illusion of Options

Meta insists that these AI blurbs are optional, but we all know how the feature implementation actually works. One day you see a little AI badge in your chats, the next day it flashes up every time you open the app. The granular controls are buried in 3 menus, so most people will just click 'Accept' and wonder why their app feels different.

 

Likewise, it would be naive to think that this will stop at the abstract: Once the new system is in place, Meta could introduce intelligent responses, live translations, or cross-chat analytics under the guise of 'help.' It would slowly expand the initial feature into a full suite of AI surveillance tools.

And privacy aside - what are we doing as humans? Will you read an AI summary of your private conversation, use the AI ​​to write a response, then your friend's AI summarizes the AI's message and writes a new message, so you can read that summary? At some point, it will just be bots talking to bots while we scroll through summaries.

Before you hit that toggle, ask yourself whether the convenience is worth giving Meta AI more opportunities to snoop on your conversations. It's not easy to entrust your personal privacy to a company with a history of scandals, no matter how appealing those new features may seem.