India, Aug. 21 -- When Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma warned that "Meta AI can now read your WhatsApp group chats," it rattled a lot of people. Claiming that AI could scan chats by default, he urged users to enable WhatsApp's "Advanced Chat Privacy" setting to block the feature.

WhatsApp is clear: your group chats are still protected by end-to-end encryption. Meta AI can only read messages you explicitly share or those that mention. In other words, the AI won't silently scan your conversations.

The "Advanced Chat Privacy" setting-introduced in April-blocks others from exporting your chat, auto-downloading media, or sending content to Meta AI without your consent. But it doesn't change how standard encryption works. WhatsApp and Meta...