According to ITSecurityNews, Meta launched Incognito Chat with Meta AI on 13 May 2026 and made it available to WhatsApp users as an option for AI conversation. The article reports that the feature keeps conversations in a hardware Trusted Execution Environment so that Meta cannot read the chat content, calling the protection architectural rather than contractual. ITSecurityNews contrasts retention statements across vendors, saying Google acknowledges Gemini temporary chats may be retained up to 72 hours, while OpenAI and Anthropic reportedly retain certain ChatGPT and Claude interactions for at least 30 days. The article links these retention practices to several legal cases and a court order involving storage of ChatGPT conversations, and it reports litigation involving Gemini in a separate wrongful-death allegation.

Editorial analysis – technical context: The article describes the protection as implemented via a hardware-backed Trusted Execution Environment, which shifts data access control from server-side policy to device-level isolation. Industry observers have discussed similar architectures as a way to reduce provider-side access to plaintext, but the article does not provide vendor technical specifications or independent validation of the implementation.

The reporting frames Meta’s move against a backdrop of rising legal and regulatory scrutiny over conversational data retention. The article connects retention and discovery demands in litigation to why vendors publicly document retention windows, and it highlights that different providers are publishing materially different retention timelines.

Observers will likely monitor three signals the article raises: retention disclosures from other large providers, litigation outcomes that demand chat logs as evidence, and technical audits or third-party verification of Trusted Execution Environment claims. The article does not quote Meta executives on rationale, and it does not publish independent audit results; those remain open verification points according to the reporting.