Google has finally started rolling out the beta of Magic Compose, its new messaging feature that uses AI to help you compose text messages. However, as pointed out by android policeThe feature comes with one huge caveat: It will send “20 previous messages” to Google’s servers to generate suggestions — even if you’re using RCS with end-to-end encryption (E2EE).
Google outlines these terms on its Magic Compose support page, noting that it will send these messages along with any included emoji, reactions, and URLs to its servers to help its AI craft an appropriate response. The company says it will not send any messages with attachments, voice messages and images, but notes that “image captions and voice transcriptions may be sent.”
Google first rolled out E2EE on the app in 2020 and made it available for group chats late last year. Toggling the feature on means that third parties — not even Google — will see your messages. When using Magic Compose with E2EE Desire Send your messages to Google’s servers, the company says it still can’t actually read them.
Google spokesperson Justin Rende further clarified ledge that “conversation data used by Magic Compose is not retained” and that “suggested response outputs are not retained after they are provided to the user.” Once you turn off Magic Compose, Google will no longer send your messages to its servers.
If you have access to the feature, you’ll see a chat bubble next to the app’s message composer. From there, you can choose a suggested response and then continue rewriting the text using various preset styles like “Chill,” “Upbeat,” or “Shakespeare.” The feature is only available with RCS messages for now, and there’s no word on when it might support SMS/MMS.
Microsoft also introduced a similar feature in its keyboard app, SwiftKey. This allows you to compose text messages and emails, as well as select the Bing icon within the app’s toolbar to change the tone, format, and length of suggested messages.
