Meta’s encrypted messaging app WhatsApp will use an approach pioneered by Apple to add AI capabilities without compromising privacy.
The company has announced that it will use tech it calls Private Processing, which appears to exactly replicate Apple’s Private Cloud Compute …
Apple’s Private Cloud Compute
Apple takes a two-stage approach to ensuring user privacy for Apple Intelligence features:
- As much processing as possible is done on-device, with no data sent to servers
- If external processing power is needed, Private Cloud Compute (PCC) servers are used
Any personal data sent to PCC uses end-to-end encryption, so that not even Apple has access to it – but the company goes further than this. It uses an approach known as ‘stateless computation,’ which means that once processing is complete, the personal data is completely wiped from the system. The moment processing is complete, it’s as if it never existed in the first place.
Additionally, Apple allows anyone to check the security of the approach for themselves, meaning security researchers will be able to verify the company’s claims.
WhatsApp will use Private Processing
Concerns were raised when Meta added an AI chatbot to WhatsApp, with no option to remove it.
Some users are seeing a new Meta AI logo in the chats screen, while others have an ‘Ask Meta AI or Search’ prompt in the search bar. There is currently no way to remove either.
Many users are expressing their frustration at what they see as an unwanted intrusion, with Guardian columnist Polly Hudson among those to object. She likened it to the time Apple annoyed everyone by adding a U2 album to their devices.
One of the capabilities of the WhatsApp AI is to summarize messages, which obviously entails the ability to read them.
The company has now laid out how it will ensure this is done in a privacy-protecting way.
We’re excited to share an initial overview of Private Processing, a new technology we’ve built to support people’s needs and aspirations to leverage AI in a secure and privacy-preserving way. This confidential computing infrastructure, built on top of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), will make it possible for people to direct AI to process their requests — like summarizing unread WhatsApp threads or getting writing suggestions — in our secure and private cloud environment.
In other words, Private Processing will allow users to leverage powerful AI features, while preserving WhatsApp’s core privacy promise, ensuring no one except you and the people you’re talking to can access or share your personal messages, not even Meta or WhatsApp.
Includes two other key PCC features
Like PCC, Private Processing will use stateless processing.
Stateless processing and forward security: Private Processing must not retain access to user messages once the session is complete to ensure that the attacker can not gain access to historical requests or responses.
Finally, Meta will also follow Apple’s lead in allowing anyone to verify its claims.
Users and security researchers must be able to audit the behavior of Private Processing to independently verify our privacy and security guarantees.
You can find more details on the company’s engineering blog.
9to5Mac’s Take
While there are always grumbles when anyone copies Apple (more so than when Apple copies others), this is an area where nobody should have any complaints. Meta appears to be precisely replicating all of Apple’s safeguards, and that’s to be entirely commended. All tech giants should do the same.
The verification part is particularly important in Meta’s case. Given the company’s, uh, casual attitude to privacy over a great many years, few would be willing to take it at its word.
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