Google has been working on this since November last year going by the wayback archive of the support page for this feature.

I'm not seeing any indication that Gemini can read your messages, though. You can compose messages and start calls, but I can't get it to read me any of my messages. In fact, I can't even get it to send messages to group chats, only to individual contacts.

The feature makes a lot of sense, of course. WhatsApp is to many countries across the globe what texting and calling is to Americans. If your smart assistant can't even interact with WhatsApp, it's basically useless for many people.

Edit: ah, that explains why I can't make Gemini read my messages to me, Google's own documentation (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928) says it can't:

    What Gemini can’t do with WhatsApp
    
        Read or summarize your messages
        Add or read images, gifs, or memes in your messages
        Add or play audio or videos in your messages
        Read or respond to WhatsApp notifications

Does anyone know how I can make Gemini read messages? I can't even find the assistant settings necessary for that stuff to function.

People have been clowning on Apple for being behind on the AI stuff and -- while I'd never defend how they promised a bunch of features in 2024, showed them in ads, and sold iPhones based on vaporware, but still haven't shipped most of the features -- I will say, I imagine a lot of the hold-up is because they realized how dangerous it is to start trusting AI with the sensitive data on your phone. It's probably not too hard to make it work most of the time, but even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably reconsider shipping.

I don't believe Google has the tact to care as long as they look like a market competitor in something.

The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps Activity to off, which means you don't have any history for Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.

These big tech companies are so frustrating. Why does every single aspect of our digital lives need to be monitored? It’s like whack a mole trying to get the most basic of privacy.

Gemini being able to read WhatsApp messages (when explicitly asked) and take actions can be convenient. If it does so without prompting or feeds the data back into their model in any way for training - that's a big no.

> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models.

Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention.

More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mainstream alternative.

How does it work technically?

Does Whatsapp expose these messages via an API? If yes, then it seems like this is not only on Google.

If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they intercepting input controls? Are they intercepting network traffic? That seems unlikely, given its probably end to end encrypted and the decryption happens within the scope of the Whatsapp process.

This really annoys the shit out of me. First people work hard to enable E2E encryption on WhatsApp, then Google goes "lol we'll just upload your chats to Gemini cloud".

Apparently, my personal account being a gsuite account is to my benefit this time as "your administrator has not enabled access to Gemini for your account".

Learn how to disable Gemini AI on Android https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android

The whole situation is still clear as mud to me. What if I don't have the Gemini app installed, how do I get to its configuration screen? Is the component which exfiltrates the data part of the Gemini app, or is it a separate Android component which also has to be removed? What if I didn't receive that email?

There is no such thing as privacy on a non-free OS and especially on a non-free OS with a closed app store.

We told you this would happen.

In the year 2025 I can’t think of any reason a person would use Signal instead of WhatsApp. All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is your excuse.

I just switched to /e/os. Soooo no the fuck they can't!

God. That feels good. Everyone should try this.

More surprising is that people think this is the first time - be default your WhatsApp backups are unencrypted by default so they have had the access for long time for large part of the userbase. Also primary reason why WhatsApp hasn’t been a problem for law enforcements.

I hope the EU sues the shit/existence out of them for exfiltrating private conversations and violating the secrecy of correspondence without explicit consent

Tech corporations and their managers are basically data rapists

> Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

Now ? I guess some people really need a reality check. Google controls the OS which runs of your phone and has access to all your data. Just like Apple or Microsoft.

If you connect Gemini to Assistant, and connect Assistant to Whatsapp, then you have connected Gemini to Whatsapp.

https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en

Documentation is unclear, but it appears Gemini is always connected to Utilities, and Utilities is always connected to Whatsapp, and the data flow between these apps is not documented.

I confess I got a pretty good laugh out of seeing this on the same day I saw billboards bragging that "not even WhatsApp can read your messages." Oops.

May be they are reading the notification using notifications reading service (Feature in Android) and use intents to send messages. But from intent you can either share (user action) a message to a particular contact or automatically open whatsapp on a particular contact and prefill the message in text box. May be whatapp may have exposed an intent to directly send message or they are just prefilling the text box

e2e encryption is insufficient when you don't control the host, and though you may own your Android/iOS device - the proprietary stack owns you.

Not exactly related, but does anyone know what's the best way to backup WhatsApp data on an Android phone without using Google drive these days?

If you use Google to backup your WhatsApp chats (most people do), Google can already read your messages, because the backup is not encrypted.

WhatsApp by default backs up messages to Google Drive. It has done so for many years. Google likely already has all your chat data.

I wonder what meta will do, they recently introduced meta ai inside WhatsApp (even though I didn’t enable it, or asked for it), it’s just floating there.

With Gemini having access, those who are happy to give AI access to their apps would surely prefer Gemini as it will be phone wide instead of meta ai which only runs inside WhatsApp.

At least Google users get a usable AI for all of their phones spying.

Siri can't even pronounce my own name correctly!

This is concerning but I am telling my Whatsapp user friends about the access to their immense data that Meta has and they should be concerned. But even the friends in tech, who lead massive product development, feel there is nothing concerning.

There are ways to disable Gemini on Android but since we are talking about WhatsApp, let me tell you that there is no way yo disable Meta AI in WhatsApp and of course you were never asked to enable it.

Why does Whatsapp allow this? It defeats their whole encryption Spiel.

Being unable to easily uninstall is quite annoying. Reminds me of the old Microsoft with their deep integration of Internet Explorer into the OS.

Any way for other AI apps to do that. It could be nice to have a local open source app doing the same. Does something like that exist?

It looks like a new EU fine is coming... But this time it should come fast because this is unacceptable

This is why we need free software and free phones. I want the software I run to work for me.

Do people use Gemini on their phones? Does it do anything if you’re not using it?

Oof, that's not what the WhatsApp ads on the train station platform say.

On Pixel phones, it is possible to disable the app "AICore" https://i.imgur.com/BKJWFaj.png. I assume this disables Gemini also. I will confirm and write back.

Choose your own adventure:

1. Security > Privacy > Convenience 2. Security > Convenience > Privacy 3. Privacy > Security > Convenience 4. Privacy > Convenience > Security 5. Convenience > Security > Privacy 6. Convenience > Privacy > Security

WhatsApp backup on your Google account contains all your message history, and is unencrypted. If you use google cloud backup for your phone, Google can read your WhatsApp messages, and has been able to do so for more than 5 years now.

Google promises

That gave me a good belly laugh. Thankyou Google.

There seems to be this blatant forcing AI products on people. WhatsApp themselves have an AI feature that you can't turn off or remove. Their only advice is to simply not use it. Is it just a massive push before regulations or are they speed running annoying everyone so much that regulation is the only option?

Honestly I was surprised not to see an announcement for some kind of agentic API in Android during GIO. Think some kind of combination of content providers and a rest interface, defined by the developers of each app.

Having the system level agent needing to interface with the UI in such a messy way doesn't feel like the best way for it to accomplish its tasks.

Don’t most people do WhatsApp backups to Google Drive? Google already has your entire chat history.

Sorry, but hasn't Google Assistant had this same access for the past 10 years?

Do you not have to prompt Gemini to initiate any search?

Sorry, but this title sounds overly click-baity to me. Google definitely can’t read or write my WhatsApp messages. Because I’m not using an Android/Google phone with WhatsApp on it. Although I am using both Gemini and WhatsApp, the whole article doesn’t apply to me, and surely I’m not unique in this.

"What are you going to do, huh?" -- with love, Google.

If this is true, Zuck will be furious.

just stop using whatsapp

how does this work ? Aren't the whatsapp data encrypted locally ?

I guess EU etc.. is too busy picking up on Apple and overlooking such shit from Google and MS.

Just a kind reminder that you can't delete chats on Gemini if you're using a Google Workspace account.

I don't know how they believe that this is remotely a good thing, or if this is even in accordance with the GDPR.

Now just assume something odd happens and it pulls in a couple of your WhatsApp messages into its Activity History.

AI has really accelerated enshitification

If you do not like this, file a complaint with your State's AG. I just did that.

I do not use WhatsApp, but I have other apps I do not want google to see.

There's a lot of business happening on WhatsApp. I don't think Google cares that much about the messages I sent to my family (although it helps with profiling and ad targetting) but I bet the real money is understanding what people are buying and how they do commerce in WhatsApp.

I don't see what the problem is. If the User doesn't want Gemini to read his or her messages, the User doesn't have to partake in the sending of the messages. Simple! A User agrees to be bound by the ToS (Terms of Service) in having they do take to receive the user agreement as bound in law by Google. The User doesn't need to understand or have the right to contest the agreement or the use of any data created by a User, as the User can simply not use the product or service as governed by the same Google ToS. Simple!

Things like these make me glad to have a Xiaomi phone with their minimal implementation of Google instead of a full on Android phone. I get to avoid this stuff being pushed on me, and I don't use any of the Xiaomi "AI" stuff (which wouldn't support foreign apps anyway).

Granted, my data is definitely being sent to Xiaomi analytics, fixed by NextDNS. Re: governmental influence, I'd prefer Chinese to US (then again, that is my ethnicity bias). Recent events make the two governments look more similar than ever.