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.

What is it and what does it do? 

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 is defending a class action lawsuit in the US taken by authors who accuse it of illegally using pirated copies of their work to train the AI).

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 apologised (it’s polite) and said it can’t do this “yet”.

“This feature will be available for you soon,” it added.

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.

(Given that the top results on Google now are also AI-generated this is likely to provide a similar user experience.)

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.

Mark Zuckerberg arrives at a Capitol Hill AI event. Alamy

Alamy

I want Meta AI to write me a poem in the style of Seamus Heaney about Trump’s tariffs – but I don’t seem to have it?

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.

Anyway, here you go:

“In the shadow of the rust belt’s pain,

Where factories stood, now empty, bare,

A wall of tariffs rose, a barrier cold,

Erected by a leader, proud, untold.”

And so on.

Meta AI doing its thing.

I’m sorry I asked. So how will Meta use my personal information? 

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.

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. 

For example, if you tell it that you’re a vegetarian and ask what you should have for dinner, it will remember that you’re a vegetarian. When The Journal tried deleting a chat of this type – and then subsequently asked what to have for dinner, it still suggested all vegetarian options, indicating that it had retained the deleted information.

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.

Are there any other concerns about it?

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.

“In terms of WhatsApp, we still have some open questions that require answering and we continue to engage with WhatsApp on these,” it added,

Meta said: “We are confident that making MetaAI available on WhatsApp is in line with legal requirements in Europe and we’ll continue to answer questions from the DPC as we move forward with our roll-out.”

It’s like that time Apple downloaded U2 to my phone. Can I remove it?

Ah yes, the unforgettable misfire, when Apple gifted a free copy of the album Songs of Innocence to iPhone users whether they wanted it or not – and then had to release a U2 removal tool in response to the backlash.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, the Edge and Bono in 2014. Alamy

Alamy

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.

The Journal tried asking the AI how it could be removed from WhatsApp – but the answers it generated don’t work. The answers referred to WhatsApp settings options that don’t exist.

With reporting from AFP.