Can Meta's WhatsApp AI read your messages?

"Important: WhatsApp Chat Privacy Notice. Due to ongoing cybersecurity challenges from AI , it is critical that all WhatsApp group admins enable advanced chat privacy settings immediately. Failure to do so can allow AI systems to legally access all group chat messages, member phone numbers, and even personal data stored on phones. This also includes one-on-one chats!" (sic).

This WhatsApp chain warning that Meta's AI can read its users' chats has gone viral. According to the alert, if you don't disable the advanced privacy settings in your chats, chats group messages, Meta's artificial intelligence (AI) systems "could access all messages." However, this is a hoax . Meta's WhatsApp AI cannot read your messages.

Meta's WhatsApp AI can't read your messages

To determine whether Meta's WhatsApp AI can read users' messages, Infoveritas conducted a search on the WhatsApp website , a channel owned by META. It specifies that messages sent through this channel, as well as videos, documents, photos, etc., remain end-to-end encrypted . This means that only the sender and recipient can read them. This system can only view the content when a WhatsApp message is sent directly to Meta's AI. To do so, a specific chat must be opened with it.

"End-to-end encryption keeps your personal messages and calls between you and the person you're communicating with. No one outside of the chat , not even WhatsApp, can read, listen to, or share them. That's because with end-to-end encryption, your messages are secured with a lock , and only you and the recipient have the special key needed to unlock and read them. This all happens automatically , without you needing to activate any special settings to protect your messages," it states.

How does Meta's WhatsApp AI work?

Meta's AI functionality in WhatsApp exists. However, as noted, personal messages are by default out of reach of the company's AI because they are encrypted. What 'Advanced Chat Privacy' allows, a new setting that Meta, as noted in this El País article, introduced in March 2025 in Spain, offers more control to the user, as it prevents the app's AI from intervening in the conversation by mentioning it, as well as preventing others from exporting your conversations, automatically downloading media files to their phone, or using your messages for AI functions.

Therefore, if you enable Advanced Chat Privacy, you only prevent the app's AI from intervening in the conversation by mentioning it by typing @Meta AI .