Meta adds privacy feature to WhatsApp days after US House ban

WhatsApp is adding a privacy feature to WhatsApp just days after reports emerged that Meta’s messaging app had been banned on government devices used by staffers at the US House of Representatives.

The feature can generate quick summaries of the latest messages WhatsApp users receive on their devices. The company added a unique twist — the summaries will be private and not visible to Meta or unauthorized users.

“You can get an idea of what is happening before reading the details in your unread messages,” Meta explained in a blog entry Wednesday.

The summaries are generated using Meta’s generative AI (genAI) technology, which is making its way into more applications. The company has already added it into the interfaces for WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram and is hiring engineers from rival genAI companies. It recently acquired Scale AI for $14.3 billion.

Privacy is a critical aspect of the feature, Meta stressed. “No one else in the chat can see that you summarized unread messages either. This means your privacy is protected at all times,” the company said.

Meta has had its struggles with privacy features in the past. This week, WhatsApp was reportedly banned on government devices used by House staffers due to security concerns.

But apparently Meta is looking to reverse that trend by creating secure AI environments that lock down the data from which the summaries are generated. It does so using a technology called “Private Processing” where “no one except you and the people you’re talking to can access or share your personal messages, not even Meta or WhatsApp,” Meta wrote in a briefing about the technology.)

Users can request a private computing environment, which is built on an emerging technology called confidential computing. The technology creates a secure enclave in which data is stored, AI summaries are generated and then served to users who can unlock the information.

A number of chipmakers are implementing confidential computing technology into their components. Intel chips can create a secure room in which data is accessible only to people with the right keys.  Nvidia offers similar confidential computing technology in its GPUs. And Google Cloud’s Gemini uses the technology so companies can deploy the AI model in private infrastructure. And Apple has Private Cloud Compute, where much of the customer data and AI queries are kept private to customers and not visible to Apple. 

Using genAI processing to summarize personal messages marks the first time Meta has applied Private Processing, Meta said. “We expect there will be others where the same or similar infrastructure might be beneficial in processing user requests,” the company explained.

Meta last week added secure keys to Facebook messaging, which provides an extra authentication layer for users to access messages.

There have been concerns about genAI companies using customer data to train models. Data privacy and genAI has also been a topic in sovereign AI, where individual nations have their own privacy and data residency regulations.Meta adds privacy feature to WhatsApp days after US House ban – ComputerworldRead More