Meta is introducing an incognito mode for Meta AI on WhatsApp and in the standalone Meta AI app that runs sessions in a secure processing environment and does not retain or save those messages. By default, messages in an incognito session disappear when you close the chat, and the session ends if you close the app or lock your phone, at which point Meta AI loses the context of that conversation. This gives users a built‑in way to keep sensitive AI interactions transient and out of their persistent chat history.
Users will start an incognito session by tapping a new icon available in one‑on‑one chats with Meta AI; Meta says the same option will appear in the standalone Meta AI app. Incognito conversations are designed to run separately from standard AI interactions so those sessions won’t be visible to others and won’t be stored for later use, according to the company.
Technically, Meta built incognito chats on the private processing infrastructure it described last year, an architecture meant to deliver AI features without undermining WhatsApp’s end‑to‑end encryption. While earlier WhatsApp AI features used smaller models, the company says incognito sessions use its latest Muse Spark model, released last month. WhatsApp has already applied this infrastructure to functions such as AI‑generated message summaries.
Meta said the incognito option will roll out to WhatsApp and the Meta AI app over the next few months. The company is also developing Side Chat, a feature intended to let users invoke Meta AI inside existing chats to ask questions privately without notifying other participants; at present, asking the assistant inside a group requires tagging a message and returns an answer visible to everyone.
Alice Newton‑Rex, WhatsApp’s VP of Product, framed the feature around sensitive user needs — from financial and health questions to advice about delicate messages — saying people should be able to ask those questions as privately as possible. For users, the change establishes an official, ephemeral path for certain AI interactions that might otherwise remain in chat history. The move aligns WhatsApp with a broader industry trend toward privacy‑first chat options: competing services already offer incognito modes and privacy‑focused chatbots. Recent reporting has also highlighted legal cautions that chatbot conversations can be used in litigation, underscoring why ephemeral sessions may matter for both individual privacy and potential legal exposure.
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