WhatsApp's New AI Fights Scam Messages

WhatsApp is enhancing user security with a new, optional Scam Alert feature. This tool leverages on-device machine learning to detect potentially fraudulent messages. When a suspicious chat pattern is identified, users will see a warning directly in their conversation, which is not visible to the sender. This allows individuals to take immediate action, such as blocking, reporting, or choosing to continue the conversation. Users can also mark chats as trusted if they believe a warning was issued in error, which will prevent future alerts for that specific chat. Sharing the last five messages can help improve the feature's accuracy. Given that WhatsApp has over 3 billion users, it has become a significant channel for scams, including wire transfers and pig butchering schemes. In 2025, victims reported losing more than $2.1 billion to social media scams, with over $425 million attributed to WhatsApp alone, according to the FTC. Meta emphasizes that message content does not leave the user's device for classification, ensuring privacy. Users can disable Scam Alert at any time.