WhatsApp is working on private AI chats in the cloud

Meta announced a caller WhatsApp diagnostic it says is simply a backstage mode to interact with Meta AI. Called “Private Processing,” the diagnostic is wholly optional, launches successful the “coming weeks,” and neither Meta, WhatsApp, nor third-party companies volition beryllium capable to spot interactions that usage it, according to the release.

Meta says users tin “direct AI to process their requests,” similar for AI chat summaries, utilizing Private Processing. If they do, the strategy won’t “retain entree to idiosyncratic messages erstwhile the league is complete” truthful that a imaginable attacker can’t entree them aft the fact, according to the company. 

Meta wants to forestall attackers from targeting users without archetypal compromising the full system. It besides wants to guarantee that autarkic 3rd parties are “able to audit the behaviour of Private Processing to independently verify our privateness and information guarantees.” Private Processing is present portion of Meta’s bug bounty program, and the institution promises to merchandise a “detailed information engineering plan paper” arsenic it gets person to launching the system. 

The strategy Meta describes sounds similar to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute (PCC). Like Apple, Meta says it volition relay Private Processing requests done a third-party supplier for OHTTP, a protocol that obscures users’ IP addresses. But as Wired notes, 1 quality is that each of WhatsApp’s AI requests are handled connected Meta’s servers and users person to initiate Private Processing. On the different hand, Apple defaults to on-device AI processing, but defaults to PCC erstwhile requests spell to its servers.