Meta made its Meta AI chatbot a non-removable part of WhatsApp in April 2025, but there is a way to help stop it encroaching on your chats.
WhatsApp now has a new privacy feature called Advanced Chat Privacy, which puts further limits on what action can be taken with the contents of your conversations.
It also stops those in the chat from bringing Meta AI into the picture. In a normal chat, those participating can ask the chatbot a question by typing @MetaAI in their messages.
“Turning on Advanced Chat Privacy would mean that you and the people you’re chatting in the group with won’t be able to @MetaAI with any in-chat requests, whether that’s mentioning Meta AI in messages or asking Meta AI questions,” Meta told us.
Switching Advanced Chat Privacy on applies a few more restrictions, too. It stops chats from being exported and stops posted media from automatically being downloaded to the device.
Of course, it won’t stop someone from taking a picture of a message or image, or screenshotting it.
How to block Meta AI from WhatsApp chats
How do you enable Advanced Chat Privacy? Tap on the name of a group or solo chat, and you should see the toggle in the menu that pops up, alongside options like Chat Lock and Disappearing Messages.
At the time of writing, this was not available on our Android test phone. But it may well be by the time you read this.
Meta has attracted criticism following its roll-out of Meta AI in WhatsApp. It appears as its own chat, and will gradually work its way down your list of active conversations if you diligently ignore its existence.
“Meta AI is an optional service from Meta that uses AI to provide responses,” says Meta.
“Don’t share information, including sensitive topics, about others or yourself that you don’t want the AI to retain and use.”
This highlights why the ability to block Meta AI from being corralled into chats is so important, because the use of it may see your content used to further train the underlying AI model.
In previous articles on the topic, we’ve highlighted suggestions that you can switch to using WhatsApp for Business instead. However, Advanced Chat Privacy should make this feel at least a little less pressing.
