Meta adds Incognito Chat to WhatsApp AI amid privacy concerns

Meta is trying to close one of consumer AI’s biggest trust gaps with Incognito Chat, a new WhatsApp mode that puts sensitive prompts, from health issues and loan details to career advice, into a temporary conversation that Meta says even it cannot read. The company says the chats are processed in a secure environment, are not saved, and disappear by default. Will Cathcart, WhatsApp’s chief, has argued that people should not have to hand over the information behind sensitive questions to the companies running AI systems.

The feature is launching on both WhatsApp and the standalone Meta AI app, and Meta said it is built on WhatsApp’s Private Processing technology. Users can start it from a new icon in one-on-one Meta AI chats, the session ends if the app is closed or the phone is locked, and the rollout will take place over the next few months. For now, Incognito Chat is text-only, so images cannot be uploaded, while Meta says Side Chat will follow in coming months and will let people get private AI help inside ordinary WhatsApp conversations without interrupting them.

The privacy pitch is narrower than the branding suggests. Meta’s engineering team says Private Processing is designed so that Meta, WhatsApp, or any third-party relay cannot access the data, and it preserves WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption model. The same engineering post says people should be able to stop messages from being used for AI features through WhatsApp’s Advanced Chat Privacy setting, which is the kind of control that matters when a product markets itself as private but still sits inside a larger account system.

That distinction matters because WhatsApp still requires a mobile phone number and basic profile information to create an account, and its privacy notice says the service collects information when people install, access or use it. Meta also says interactions with its AI products can be used to improve AI at Meta, so the gap between private chat and private platform remains important for users deciding what to ask, and where. Incognito Chat may reduce the risk of a permanent AI transcript, but it does not erase the service’s account-level data trail.