WhatsApp plots MORE dreaded changes despite huge backlash from users and insists new features are ‘optional’
WHATSAPP is planning to add even more AI to the app despite recent changes being slammed by users.
The platform recently rolled out Meta AI, allowing people to ask a virtual assistant questions.
But many have criticised the feature’s prominence within the app, appearing as a colourful swirling circle in the bottom right of the screen.
“Let’s be honest here no one wanted or needed a meta AI in your messages,” one person fumed on Reddit.
“Apart from being useless having an AI right next to where I communicate with all my friends feels wrong.”
Another wrote: “Thanks for pushing all my friends to move over to telegram.
“Your forced, non removable AI slop in our lives where we expect privacy was the straw.”
The social media giant defended the shake-up saying the tool is optional, after users asked for a way to hide it completely.
And the firm appears to be undeterred with plans to introduce more AI in future.
In a post designed to assure people about trust and privacy, WhatsApp dropped that features such as summarising messages could be on the horizon.
“We set out to enable AI capabilities with the privacy that people have come to expect from WhatsApp, so that AI can deliver helpful capabilities, such as summarizing messages, without Meta or WhatsApp having access to them,” WhatsApp said.
Apple was recently forced to halt a similar feature of its own for news notifications, after the AI created false headlines.
These included incorrect claims that Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay and Luke Littler had won the PDC World Darts Championship before it had even began.
In a website post for engineers, WhatsApp details some of the technical background behind its plans to enable AI using something called Private Processing.
The company describes it as an “optional capability” that allows users to “initiate a request to a confidential and secure environment and use AI for processing messages where no one — including Meta and WhatsApp — can access them”.
Mark Zuckerberg – who owns WhatsApp’s parent Meta – recently ignited an AI war with ChatGPT.
Meta AI is now available as a standalone app, as well as being attached to his other platforms WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
OPINION: AI FOR WHATSAPP IS NOT THE WAY
By Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Assistant Editor at The Sun
When will Meta stop pushing all this extra guff and let WhatsApp be a chat app?
It’s gradually morphing into its bigger sibling, Facebook, with status updates and communities, already perfectly served elsewhere.
Or, at least give people real choice with an option to hide them.
WhatsApp is powerful because virtually everyone has it, with billions of users across the globe.
It’s the one place where all my family updates are usefully kept – in between useless chatter about the neighbour’s latest disruption or moans about the council not cleaning the street.
We make important arrangements there, share holiday snaps and live location when meeting up, and for that I’m thankful for WhatsApp’s vital role.
But with this latest change, I’m ready to delete WhatsApp unless bosses change course pronto.