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.

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.

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.”

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.

ChatGPT’s image generator is now on WhatsApp, allowing users to create AI images by chatting with the AI chatbot.

It has been a long time coming — seven years since Meta first announced its plan to do so, in fact — but ads are starting to appear in WhatsApp as of Monday. They'll only be visible on the Updates tab and the company says those who use the app only to chat with family and friends really won't see any change to their WhatsApp experience.