Meta Platforms said that they will be rolling out an “incognito” mode for WhatsApp users to have private conversations with its AI chatbot, a move intended to ease privacy concerns about sensitive information that users share in chats.
The social media company said in a blog post that incognito chat mode provides a way to have private, temporary conversations with Meta AI, its artificial intelligence assistant that’s been available on WhatsApp for a few years.
Messages will be processed in a “secure environment” that even Meta can’t access, won’t be saved by default and will disappear when exiting a session, Meta said.
Generative AI systems have been dogged by privacy concerns because the large language models that underpin these systems are trained on vast troves of data, sometimes including personal information provided by users themselves in their conversations with AI chatbots.
Rival chatbot makers already have some privacy features. Google’s Gemini chatbot has the option to disable chat history and opt out of allowing one’s data to be used in training its AI models. ChatGPT has similar controls.
Meta says it’s rolling out incognito chats because users often ask chatbots sensitive questions or include private financial, personal, health or work data in their questions.
“We’re starting to ask a lot of meaningful questions about our lives with AI systems, and it doesn’t always feel like you should have to share the information behind those questions with the companies that run those AI systems,” Will Cathcart, Meta’s head of WhatsApp, told reporters.
Incognito chat mode has safety features to prevent the chatbot from answering questions about harmful topics, Cathcart said.
It will “steer the user towards helpful information if it can and then refuse (to answer) and eventually even just stop interacting with the user completely,” Cathcart said.
Users will only be able to type in questions and get text responses; they won’t be able to upload or generate images. They’ll also have to confirm their age because Meta doesn’t allow users under 13 on its platforms.
Smart glasses are ‘an invasion of privacy’ – Meta’s are selling better than ever
Issues with a new wave of “smart glasses” seem to be piling up.
Yet some of the biggest technology companies in the world are poised to sell many millions of pairs in the coming years.
Women leaving the beach, going into a shop, or simply standing outside are now being approached by men usually wearing Meta’s Ray-Bans, the company’s “smart” or “AI” glasses, often in order to film the women’s responses to casual questions or pick-up lines without their knowledge or consent.
The women only find out about the videos of them after they gain traction, and often abuse, online. They have little legal recourse as photography in public is broadly considered legal. One woman told the BBC that when she asked the person who posted a secret recording of her to remove it, she was told that doing so was “a paid service”.
Meta’s glasses are currently the most popular on the market, estimated to make up more than 80% of all AI or smart glasses sales, as the company was the first major tech player to launch such a product in recent years.
Made in partnership with EssilorLuxottica and offering the classic look of Ray-Bans, the glasses feature an almost invisible camera in the frames, small speakers in the arms, and lenses that can show a wearer some information. People can start recording video or take a photo with a casual touch of the frames.
The nature of the camera in Meta’s glasses can be so unobtrusive that even their wearers have been caught off guard by what and when they’re recording, and where those recordings are going.
Elon Musk confirms biggest Starship Super Heavy launch on May 20
SpaceX is about to do something it has never done before: It will launch an entirely new rocket. The American space company is targeting May 20, for the 12th flight test of its Starship vehicle, the most powerful rocket ever built.
But this time, almost everything on the rocket is different.
Starship is a two-part rocket system. The lower section, or the first stage, called Super Heavy, is the booster. This is a giant engine cluster that pushes the rocket off the ground.
The upper stage, called Starship, is the spacecraft that goes into space and carries crew and cargo. Together, they are taller than the Statue of Liberty, twice over.
For this 12th test, both parts have been redesigned from the ground up.
They will also be powered by an upgraded version of SpaceX’s Raptor engine, a type of rocket engine that burns liquid methane and liquid oxygen. The launch pad at Starbase, SpaceX’s facility in Texas, has also been rebuilt for this flight.
The rocket will lift off at 5:30 pm Central Time on May 19 (5 am IST on May 20) from Starbase. About two and a half minutes after launch, the Super Heavy booster will separate from the Starship upper stage.
It will then perform a boostback burn, firing its engines in reverse to slow itself down, and attempt a controlled landing in the Gulf of America. Because this is a new vehicle making its first flight, SpaceX will not attempt to catch the booster with its launch tower’s mechanical arms this time. Meanwhile, the Starship upper stage will continue into space. It will deploy 22 Starlink simulators, which are dummy versions of SpaceX’s internet satellites, and attempt to relight a single Raptor engine while in space. Crucially, the last two of the Starlink simulators will not just float away quietly. They will turn their cameras back on Starship itself, scanning its heat shield and transmitting imagery down to engineers on the ground.
This is SpaceX testing a method to remotely check whether Starship’s heat shield is ready to return to the launch site on future missions. It is like giving the rocket a health check from space.
Be the first to comment