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Mark Zuckerberg announces Chat Lock on WhatsApp
Mumbai: Mark Zuckerberg announced a new WhatsApp feature called Chat Lock. This feature lets people protect their most intimate conversations with a password, secures them in a separate folder, and when someone messages them and they have that chat locked, the sender’s name and the content of the message will also be hidden.
You can see Mark’s announcement here.
The passion is to find new ways to help keep the people’s messages private and secure. WhatsApp is excited to bring the viewers a new feature called Chat Lock, which lets them protect their most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security.
Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with device, password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the contents of that chat in notifications too.
WhatsApp thinks this feature will be great for people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding their phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives. They can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your phone password or biometric.
Over the next few months, WhatsApp is going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices, creating a custom password for the chats so that people can use a unique password different from their phone’s.
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
