Meta announced in May 2026 that it is adding an incognito mode to Meta AI conversations within WhatsApp, allowing users to chat with the AI assistant privately without their messages being saved or seen by anyone.
Users can start an incognito session by tapping a new icon in one-on-one chats with Meta AI. Once the chat is closed — or if the app is closed or the phone is locked — the session ends and all messages disappear by default. Meta AI also loses the context of that conversation when the session ends. The feature will be available on the standalone Meta AI app as well, with a rollout expected over the next few months.
Alice Newton-Rex, VP of Product at WhatsApp, explained the reasoning behind the feature: “People are starting to use AI for everything, including some of their most private thoughts, whether that’s tackling financial or health questions, or for advice on how to respond to a tricky message from a friend or a colleague. We think it’s really important to give people the ability to ask these questions as privately as possible.”
Meta has been building toward this capability for some time. The company previously detailed a private processing infrastructure designed to support AI features without breaking end-to-end encryption, which has already powered features such as AI-generated message summaries. The new incognito chat uses Meta’s latest Muse Spark model, released last month, which Newton-Rex said is more capable than the smaller models used in earlier features.
Meta is also developing a follow-on feature called Side Chat, which would let users privately invoke Meta AI within group chats to ask questions without other participants being notified or able to see the exchange.
The launch comes after Reuters reported last month that lawyers have raised concerns that users’ conversations with AI chatbots could potentially be used against them in litigation — a context that may make privacy-focused AI chat features more relevant to users. ChatGPT and Claude also offer incognito modes, and companies including DuckDuckGo and Proton have launched privacy-focused chatbots.
Source: TechCrunch