To tackle the spread of fake news via its platform, WhatsApp’s new beta version shows a test feature that would run Google-powered web-checks on images being shared on the app to verify their legitimacy.
Called “Search by Image”, the feature would search an image on the web that a user either sent or received in their chats using official Google application programming interfaces (APIs) to find similar or equal images on the web.
“If you choose to search an image, WhatsApp will alert you that it will be uploaded to Google after which WhatsApp will open the browser to show the results,” WABetaInfo reported on Friday.
“When you receive an image, you can try to search it on the web and read information related to that image on the web,” it said.
