Meta says its new Incognito AI chats are 'completely private'

Meta’s got a new way for users to interact with its AI that it calls “completely private.” Accessible from either WhatsApp or the Meta AI app, Meta says the aptly titled Incognito Chat with Meta AI gives users “space to ask questions and explore ideas without anyone watching.”

In a blog post, Meta describes its new Incognito Chat as a way of ensuring the contents of your chat are never viewed by any other human beings, including anyone at Meta. The post also announced that a new Side Chat feature is coming to WhatsApp to let users privately access Meta AI inside chats with other users.

Incognito chats with Meta AI are automatically deleted, Meta says, and are strictly private — the post makes the point more than once that Meta and WhatsApp can’t access your chat content. Today’s announcement never outright says that the content of your chats won’t be used to train AI models, but the promise that human beings won’t ever read your Incognito chats is explicit.

Meta’s announcement references the fact that “incognito-style modes” in other AI apps don’t necessarily prevent platforms from accessing your chat content. That does seem to be the case: Last month, a proposed class action against Perplexity alleged that the service’s Incognito Mode quietly shares chat content with third parties (including Meta, the suit says) for the purpose of ad targeting. If you want to be fully sure your information stays private, your best bet is not feeding it into an AI platform at all.

The Incognito Chat option will be rolling out on Meta AI and WhatsApp “over the coming months.” You can read more in-depth info about the feature and how it works in Meta’s white paper here.