End-to-end encryption is still guaranteed, and Meta also said that if users only use the app to call or message their contacts, there will be “no change to [the] experience at all,” though for many, this promise simply isn’t enough.

After the tech giant announced it would begin to include ads in WhatsApp’s Updates tab, which is used by roughly 1.5 million people per day, Signal president Meredith Whittaker took to X to lure users to her messaging tool: “Use Signal,” she wrote. “We promise, no AI clutter, no surveillance ads—whatever the rest of the industry does.”

Iranian state television on Tuesday afternoon urged the country’s public to remove the messaging app WhatsApp from their smart phones, alleging without offering any evidence the app gathered user information to send to Israel.

WhatsApp has confirmed it's making a major change to its chat app, which will mean users across the globe will suddenly face seeing adverts on the screen. These are destined for a section called Updates, which sit in a tab at the bottom of the screen.

Related: Surprising earnings send Meta Platforms stock soaring By August 2014, WhatsApp had ballooned to 600 million users and become the popular messaging app in the world. Experts predicted the app could force the telecommunications industry to lose billions.

The cofounders of WhatsApp resisted ads in the app for years, including after the company was acquired by Meta for $22 billion in 2014. Brian Acton and Jan Koum left the company in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and on Monday Meta introduced ads in the “Status” feature as well as sponsored Channels in the the “Updates” tab of WhatsApp.

The ads will be shown to users only within WhatsApp’s “Updates” tab to separate them from people’s personal conversations.

ChatGPT can generate amazing images for you via WhatsApp texting. All you need to do is save the ChatGPT number.

WhatsApp users can now access ChatGPT's AI image generator directly through the messaging app. OpenAI has rolled out this creative feature in regions where ChatGPT is available, allowing users to generate or edit one image a day for free.

The Status tab is valuable screen real estate. Meta says more than 1.5 billion people use it every day. Advertising is still by far the company's largest stream of revenue so the only really surprising thing about Meta starting to show ads in WhatsApp is that it took so long.