Meta’s Llama AI: Can it read your private WhatsApp Chats, if so how do you block it from accessing your chats. How all this affects your privacy.

Unless you have been living under a rock or you have been in a comma for the past few years, you know Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the role it’s playing in our everyday lives by revolutionizing every industry from finance, education, healthcare and more. The big and small players have all invested in AI because well it’s here to stay and will soon be used in almost every aspect of our lives. Meta, Google and others have a dilemma. They need to stitch AI through their platforms, but users are understandably worried this is a privacy issue given some of these platforms main selling point is the secrecy in their end to end encryption features which guarantee absolute privacy and security. Google has been leading the charge, but has been careful to emphasize opt outs at all times. Meta has taken a different approach with WhatsApp. AI is there. You can’t remove it. But if you don’t like it, then just don’t use it. Cue the backlash. So what should users do?

Polly Hudson summed up the mood in a Guardiancolumn: “There are five stages of grief, but only two stages of discovering the little Meta AI circle on your WhatsApp screen. Fear, then fury.” Meanwhile, WhatsApp assured users via BBC News that its suddenly ever-present blue circle is optional, despite being unremovable.
I do like the team at WhatsApp. My strong sense is they exist in a corporate machine but do their best to hold as true as they can to the platform’s heritage. Privacy, security, simplicity. 

It’s a private messaging machine the world’s largest, but it’s owned by a marketing machine that has build an empire on harnessing user data yes you guessed right Meta originally Facebook.
And so with perfect timing and wry irony, just as the unremovable blue circle turned up on billions of phones, WhatsApp quietly confirmed the solution. Yes, you can remove, disable, stop Meta AI. You just need to do so chat by chat. The AI block is not front and center. But it’s there. As has now been quietly confirmed.

"Advanced Chat Privacy," WhatsApp says “is a new setting available in both chats and groups helps prevent others from taking content outside of WhatsApp for when you may want extra privacy. When the setting is on, you can block others from exporting chats, auto-downloading media to their phone, and using messages for AI features. 

That way everyone in the chat has greater confidence that no one can take what is being said outside the chat.” So, no Meta AI intruding into any of those chats. It is stopped.
Meta assures it can’t see any message content, but that’s perception versus reality. When you engage AI, Meta says it “shares information with select partners so Meta Al can offer relevant responses." As such, it warns, "don’t share information, including sensitive topics, about others or yourself that you don’t want the Al to retain and use."

“You can turn this on by tapping the chat name,” WhatsApp explains, “then tapping on Advanced Chat Privacy. This is the first version of this feature and we’re planning to add more to it so that it will eventually include even more protections.” The privacy setting also blocks any user exporting the chat or autosaving media to their phone’s gallery, which you shouldn’t do anyway for security reasons.

This new setting is rolling out to everyone on the latest version of WhatsApp.” If you’re at all worried about Meta AI, then just make sure you enable this on your chats and the blue circle is stopped in its tracks. Problem solved.

WhatsApp has a far more boring, intrusive feature which rolled some time this year and it’s an absolute nightmare to users who value their silence. If i give you 3 guesses I’m sure 90% of the users will guess right on the first try the feature I’m talking about.

The feature I’m talking about is the status mentions which apparently now is spilling over to people who are not in your contact list but as long you are sharing the same WhatsApp group when they privately mention your group you get notified and can also see their status even if they are not your contact.

While it might be a handy and nifty feature just imagine if you had 5 groups with 500+ members and let’s say just a few are mentioning your group privately on their status, you would get annoying notifications one after the other pretty much boring right. Well i tried everything to silent these type of notifications to no avail with only one exception exiting the groups so well one would wonder it defeats the purpose of these groups.

I tried muting the groups, archiving them, blocking individuals making these private mentions but still it was no use. I searched on online communities for answers but it seems as if everyone is in the same place as i am. Lastly i reached to WhatsApp support to highlight this and well a whole lot other users did as well so it remains to be seen if they will listen and make some changes just like on their AI feature.

If you have a tip, a story, or something you want us to cover get in touch with us by clicking here. Sign up to our newsletter so you won’t miss a post and stay in the loop and updated also we will be launching a free basic cybersecurity short course for beginners to teach you how to protect yourself online. Just subscribe for free to our newsletter and create an account on perusee to be eligible.

Note: You can also advertise on Perusee, just contact us, call or app +263 78 613 9635

Click here to Follow our WhatsApp channel

Keep comments respectful and inline with the article, also create an account and login to chat with members in our forum, get help on issues you need help with from community members.