WhatsApp Now Summarizes Your Unread Messages Using AI

WhatsApp is making it easier to catch up on conversations you've missed with a new AI-powered feature that summarizes unread messages. The Meta-owned messaging app now lets users tap on unread message counts to "Summarize privately" and get quick, bulleted summaries generated by Meta AI instead of scrolling through every individual message.

The feature uses Meta's "Private Processing" technology, which the company claims keeps your messages and summaries completely private – even Meta and WhatsApp staff can't see them. Other chat participants won't know you've used the summary feature either.

Message Summaries is rolling out in English to US users first, with other countries and languages coming later this year. The feature is optional and turned off by default, giving users control over which chats can use AI features through Advanced Chat Privacy settings.

Apple Intelligence offers similar message notification summaries on Apple devices. However, Apple's feature has run into some embarrassing hiccups, particularly with news notifications where AI summaries have created misleading headlines. Apple subsequently chose to disable AI summaries for news apps, and has added warnings that the feature is still in beta.

For now, WhatsApp's approach is focused on private conversations only. Whether it can avoid some of the pitfalls Apple's AI has encountered remains to be seen.