I'm so tired of tech companies pretending they know what we want. WhatsApp is now planning to cram even MORE artificial intelligence features into their messaging app, completely ignoring the fact that users are already furious about the recent changes.

Seriously, who asked for this?

Nobody wanted your stupid AI in the first place

The app recently forced Meta AI on everyone - that little virtual assistant thing that sits there like an unwanted houseguest right next to your private conversations. And people are rightfully pissed about it.

One Reddit user didn't mince words: "Let's be honest here no one wanted or needed a meta AI in your messages. Apart from being useless having an AI right next to where I communicate with all my friends feels wrong."

God. The comments just get more brutal from there.

Another user wrote something that should have Meta executives sweating: "Thanks for pushing all my friends to move over to telegram. Your forced, non removable AI slop in our lives where we expect privacy was teh straw."

I actually checked Telegram's download numbers last week (for an article I was researching), and they've seen a noticeable bump since this WhatsApp fiasco began. Coincidence? I think not.

The "it's optional" defense falls completely flat

Meta's been desperately trying to defend this mess by insisting the AI tool is "optional" - which is technically true but also completely misses the point. Users don't want to hide it... they want it GONE. There's a difference!

My friend who works in UX design (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) texted me about this last night: "It's like putting a salesperson in your living room and saying 'don't worry, you can just ignore them'... who wants that???"

Wait, they want to do WHAT with our messages?

Despite the massive backlash, WhatsApp seems determined to plow ahead with even more AI features. In what they probably thought was a reassuring post about privacy, they casually dropped this bombshell: they're working on AI that can "summarize messages."

Their exact words: "We set out to enable AI capabilities with the privacy that people have come to expect from WhatsApp, so that AI can deliver helpful capabilities, such as summarizing messages, without Meta or WhatsApp having access to them."

I spent $230 on dinner with friends last weekend, and we spent half the night ranting about this very topic. Nobody - and I mean NOBODY - at our table wanted AI summarizing their private conversations.

Remember when Apple's AI went completely off the rails?

This whole situation reminds me of Apple's recent AI disaster. They had to yank their news summarization feature after it started making up completely false headlines... including one claiming Rafael Nadal had come out as gay (he hasn't) and another declaring Luke Littler had won a darts championship before it even started.

And now WhatsApp wants to bring similar technology to our private messages? What could possibly go wrong?

Look, I'm not anti-technology. I've been covering tech developments since 2016 and have seen plenty of genuinely useful innovations. This ain't it.

The technical mumbo-jumbo doesn't make it better

WhatsApp is trying to soften the blow by explaining the technical background of how they'll implement this using something called "Private Processing." They describe it as an "optional capability" allowing users to "initiate a request to a confidential and secure environment and use AI for processing messages where no one — including Meta and WhatsApp — can access them."

Translation: "Trust us with your private conversations, we pinky promise we won't peek!"

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg (you know, the guy who owns WhatsApp through Meta) has been aggressively pushing his AI tools everywhere. Meta AI is now available as a standalone app adn has been integrated into WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

It's like he's determined to win some imaginary AI war with ChatGPT, and we're all just collateral damage.

I'll be watching this space closely... and keeping Telegram installed as my backup plan.