An AI chatbot has appeared on Irish users' WhatsApp - here's what you need to know
IRISH WHATSAPP USERS may have noticed a new ring-shaped icon in their chat screen in recent days. It’s a link to parent company Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool, which is also being rolled out to other Meta apps such as Facebook Messenger.
It’s a chatbot, like ChatGPT, that generates responses to questions and prompts. It’s based on a large language model trained using vast datasets including websites and books. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition is for his chatbot to become the most widely used digital assistant in the world.
The company will spend over $60bn this year on AI, including a vast support system of energy-hungry data centres, servers, and network infrastructure. In the US, the chatbot can respond to prompts to generate images, but this isn’t available yet in the EU.
When The Journal asked the WhatsApp chatbot to make a picture of a cat smoking a pipe, it apologized and said it can’t do this “yet.” “This feature will be available for you soon,” it added.
How People are Using it
A spokeswoman said some examples of how people are using it include asking for help solving problems or requesting more information about a topic of interest. Meta talks up its AI tool’s ease of access and its intuitive user experience for people already using Meta apps.
It says it has 700 million users so far – but it’s eyeing 1 billion. If you have WhatsApp, you’ll probably have it soon enough – it’s being rolled out gradually to tranches of users. Meta AI was introduced in the US a year ago, but the EU roll-out only started last month and many Irish users got it only in recent days.
Meta says the AI only reads messages users input directly to it, and it can’t read your WhatsApp chats. Personal chats on WhatsApp remain end-to-end encrypted, it says.
Privacy Concerns
However, Meta is being upfront with users that it is not a good idea to share information about themselves or others with the AI. “Sensitive information” should not be shared, the disclaimer presented to users on first opening the tool warns.
Basically, don’t share any information that you don’t want the AI to retain and use. As well as retaining and using personal information shared with the AI, Meta may share information fed into the AI with “select partners” to generate the responses, the disclaimer states.
A spokeswoman for Meta said if messages are deleted they won’t be used for future AI training activities. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which regulates Meta in the EU, says it has been examining Meta AI in recent months and will keep it under review as the roll-out continues in the coming weeks.
Removing the AI
Meta describes its AI as an “optional service”, but this seems to relate to the fact that users need to issue a prompt to activate it. A spokeswoman explained: “It’s not ‘on’ until you use it.” It’s worth noting that it’s pretty easy to interact with Meta AI, as it’s accessible through the search bar on the WhatsApp chat screen.
There does not seem to be a way to remove Meta AI in WhatsApp’s settings at this point. You can delete the “chat” you’ve had with the AI but the icon will remain on your chat screen inviting future interactions – and as discussed above, deleting messages does not seem to mean a total withdrawal of the information you have inputted.
Tech magazine Wired suggests entering the command /reset-ai – this results in a message from the chatbot that the AI will “reset to its default state” and delete its copy of the conversation from Meta servers.
