Overview
- WeChat staff publicly rebutted social media claims that the in-house AI assistant reads all chats or 'steals' privacy and described intended safeguards in the closed test.
- In chat use the assistant is activated only when a user asks it to help, the client temporarily reads the specified messages on the device, and original chat records are not kept.
- The assistant may make personalized suggestions based on a user’s follows, browsing and interactions with public accounts and video accounts while staying within the same access limits.
- A tested 'AI social' workflow would let one user’s assistant contact a friend’s assistant only after the friend confirms, with the assistants exchanging information and returning results for user approval.
- The team says 小微 remains in internal testing and invites feedback, but reporters note user worries about default settings and the app-level presence of the feature may keep trust fragile.