Google’s Magic Compose feature comes with a privacy trade-off

Image: Google

Google is rolling out the beta of Magic Compose, a new feature in its Messages app that uses AI to suggest text messages based on your conversation. But as Android Police reports, there's a catch: to generate suggestions, Google will send up to "20 previous messages" from your chat to its servers—even if you're using end-to-end encryption (E2EE) with RCS.

Google explains this on its Magic Compose support page, saying it will use these messages, and any emoji, reactions, and URLs they contain, to help its AI create a suitable reply. Google says it won't send any messages with attachments, voice messages, or images, but it warns that "image captions and voice transcriptions may be sent." These messages will then be discarded, with Google not storing any data or using it for training its AI models.

Google introduced E2EE for its Messages app in 2020 and expanded it to group chats last year. E2EE means that no one else—not even Google—can see your messages. Google claims that even though it will send your messages to its servers when you use Magic Compose with E2EE, it still can't read them.

A Google spokesperson told The Verge that "conversation data used by Magic Compose is not retained" and that "suggested response outputs are not retained once they've been provided to the user." Google won't send your messages to its servers when you're not using Magic Compose.

Magic Compose is one of the many AI-powered features Google showcased at its I/O event earlier this month. Google says you can use it to reply to text messages with "stylized, suggested responses with the context of your messages." The feature is currently available to users in the Google Messages beta program.

To use the feature, you'll see a chat bubble next to the app's message composer. You can choose a suggested response and then customize it with different styles, like "chill," "excited," or "Shakespeare." The feature seems to work only with RCS messages for now, and Google hasn't said when it might support SMS / MMS.