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Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

(www.neowin.net)
467 points bundie | 6 comments | 08 Jul 25 16:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.658s | source | bottom
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jeroenhd ◴[08 Jul 25 17:20 UTC] No.44502053[source]▶
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
If you connected Google Assistant to WhatsApp, it seems like data may flow that direction, but then you've already hooked WhatsApp into Google before so I don't think anyone will be surprised there.

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

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Hizonner ◴[08 Jul 25 17:43 UTC] No.44502286[source]▶
What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp:

    Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do
    with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the
    way you would have to enable any other random app to do it.
Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.
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kccqzy ◴[08 Jul 25 17:47 UTC] No.44502323[source]▶
The line is blurry. Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a OS level feature. The OS can by definition reach into any third-app app to do anything it wants. I'll give some more examples of OS-level features in case it's not clear: copy/paste is an OS-level feature and it is designed to extract arbitrary text or content from third party apps (copy) and insert them into third party apps (paste); screenshotting is an OS-level feature and it is designed to capture the visible views of any third party app with the only exception being DRM content.

Apple Intelligence has similar marketing. In last year's WWDC, there was the whole "Siri, when is my mom's flight landing?" segment (see https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/101/ at 1h22m) that didn't generate any controversy. So for some reason people think Siri should rightfully be an OS-level feature but Gemini should not. Got it. I guess Apple's PR is just that much better than Google's.

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Hizonner ◴[08 Jul 25 17:53 UTC] No.44502375[source]▶
The fact that Google would find it to be convenient for the line to be blurry doesn't mean that anybody looking at it in good faith sees the line as blurry.
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1. pc86 ◴[08 Jul 25 20:00 UTC] No.44503502[source]▶
The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're operating in bad faith.
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2. transcriptase ◴[08 Jul 25 20:45 UTC] No.44503921[source]▶
It does when it that person is taking a charitable view of anything Google has done since about 2011.
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3. michaelt ◴[08 Jul 25 20:58 UTC] No.44504028[source]▶
At first I thought the fact the advertising-and-tracking company needed access to their competitor's encrypted messenger was related to the tracking that is their core business model.

But it's unfair to assume bad faith like that.

Perhaps they merely need access to the encrypted messages in order to provide a better user experience, by serving more relevant and better personalised adverts?

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4. jchw ◴[08 Jul 25 22:19 UTC] No.44504547[source]▶
I'm not going to argue there's any bar too low for Google to not clear, but also, it really is possible that it's just for the stupid AI feature they say it is. Just because it's something Google could feasibly do doesn't mean they will. I'm very confident they have never used Google Public DNS for advertising or tracking.

It's one thing to treat funneling data "to the cloud" with suspicion out of principle, but personally I think it's counterproductive to go a step further and just assume everything is always being maximally abused. The fact that it could be is an issue, but that doesn't mean it is.

5. pc86 ◴[09 Jul 25 12:41 UTC] No.44509342[source]▶
That may mean they're stupid but it still doesn't constitute bad faith. Do you know what "bad faith" means in this context?
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6. transcriptase ◴[09 Jul 25 18:04 UTC] No.44513081{3}[source]▶
Bad faith typically encompasses willful blindness and deliberate ignorance. There’s a reason why courts can equate not knowing something when you should have and chose not to, with actually knowing it.