This option disables Meta AI and increases privacy in WhatsApp conversations

Remember when WhatsApp was just a lightweight messaging app? I miss those days. Today there are so many features, so many announcements of new stuff that sometimes useful ones slip by unnoticed.

By chance, the other day I came across “Advanced chat privacy,” available in group and individual conversations. It was released in April.

When activated, three things happen:

• It disables conversation export. This makes it harder to forward messages to third parties and process them with external AIs, like Google’s NotebookLM.
• It disables automatic media downloads.
• Finally, it disables access to Meta AI, Meta’s annoying AI that, by default, can be invoked by typing @meta in a conversation.

Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), there isn’t a global button to activate advanced privacy in all conversations; only within each conversation’s options.

Given the impossibility of using a better app, like Signal, it’s a good option to activate when sensitive topics are being discussed.