WeChat will soon have its own input method, not to capture the input method market, but to protect user privacy, Allen Zhang, "father of WeChat," said at the 2021 WeChat Open Class PRO event on January 19.
Zhang said Tencent didn't want to make a WeChat input method but received many complaints from users that their chat logs had been stolen by the input methods because they would see the corresponding ads for whatever they typed.
WeChat does not keep chat logs, and the company states that whoever peeks at users' chat logs will be fired, he said.
So for the purpose of protecting user privacy, WeChat is going to make its own input method, which will be tested on a small scale soon, he said.
"We have a technical team working on machine translation, and a very good track record in AI, and we want to verify our technical standards," Zhang said, adding, "If you trust WeChat's privacy protection, you should trust the privacy and security of WeChat input method. If people want it, let's do it. We'll be testing the input method on a small scale soon."
(Photo: Unsplash)
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