London, United Kingdom – WhatsApp users in various countries around the world have noticed a new light blue circle appearing in their chats, signaling the arrival of Meta AI into their messaging platforms. Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, has expanded the reach of its artificial intelligence chatbot beyond the US and Canada, with recent implementations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India.
The Meta AI chatbot offers basic features such as answering questions, generating text, and creating content to enhance user experience within the Meta ecosystem, which includes Messenger and Instagram. However, with its introduction, concerns regarding privacy have surfaced among users, leading to questions about the ability to disable the feature.
The new Meta AI button on WhatsApp allows users to directly interact with the AI assistant, positioned above the chat icon on Android and in the bottom right corner on iOS devices. Users can engage with the assistant by tagging @Meta AI in their chats, allowing them to ask questions and access its functionalities. Based on Meta’s language model Llama 3.2, the chatbot initially offers a limited range of features to fulfill user demands, such as text generation and web searches.
Meta assures users that the assistant cannot access or read message content unless specifically requested for assistance. While messages remain end-to-end encrypted and unlinked to other Meta accounts like Facebook or Instagram, interactions with Meta AI are not encrypted. Therefore, caution is advised when sharing sensitive information, as data may be used to enhance AI capabilities.
Despite the inability to disable Meta AI within WhatsApp at present, users have the option to reset the assistant on individual chats or across the entire app. Deleting a chat with Meta AI will not suffice, necessitating the use of reset commands to remove any previous interactions with the chatbot. As Meta continues to develop and expand its AI capabilities, more features are expected to be introduced in the future.