WhatsApp Launches Private Processing to Enable AI Features While Protecting Message Privacy

 Apr 29, 2025  Ravie Lakshmanan Artificial Intelligence / Data Protection Popular messaging app WhatsApp on Tuesday unveiled a new technology called Private Processing to enable artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in a privacy-preserving manner. “Private Processing will allow users to leverage powerful optional AI features – like summarizing unread messages or editing help – while preserving WhatsApp’s core privacy promise,” the Meta-owned service said in a statement shared with The Hacker News. With the introduction of the latest feature, the idea is to facilitate the use of AI features while still keeping users’ messages private. It’s expected to be made available in the coming weeks. The capability, in a nutshell, allows users to initiate a request to process messages using AI within a secure environment called the confidential virtual machine (CVM) such that no other party, including Meta and WhatsApp, can access them. Confidential processing is one of the three tenets that underpin the feature, the others being – Enforceable guarantees, which cause the system to fail or become publicly discoverable when attempts to modify confidential processing guarantees are detected Verifiable transparency, which allows users and independent researchers to audit the behavior of the system Non-targetability, which prevents a
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