Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

WhatsApp Now Summarizes Your Unread Messages Using AI

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
68,530
39,366


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.

whatsapp-message-ai-summaries.jpg

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.

Article Link: WhatsApp Now Summarizes Your Unread Messages Using AI
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/26/whatsapp-now-summarizes-unread-messages-ai/
  • Haha
Reactions: gusmula and SFjohn
There should be Apple Intelligence API available to developers for these things just for fun.
Parent A: “Red?”
Parent B: “We’ve already tried that. Red is a no-go—stop beating a dead horse.”

Apple Intelligence summary: Parents agree animal cruelty is a red flag.
Click to expand...
Jokes aside, great feature for those long group chats. I'm just curious what “private means processing” really means at Meta.

EDIT: Ok, there's a post on Engineering at Meta blog.
Summarising statements at face value and to the best of my knowledge and understanding:
- It's not on-device (no surprise there, unfortunately)
- but Meta doesn't know identity of requester (i.e. it's anonymised and third party is involved for part of the process)
- your messages are still E2EE, your client app unecrypts them as usual for you
- ONLY IF you want to use this feature they are reencrypted with ephemeral key and sent to Meta servers (Trusted Execution Enviroment) for processing. In very abstract principle similar to Apple's AI servers - even your client can to extent verify that it's using only these "trusted" servers. After processing and returning the response to the user, the data is deleted.

Judging from the details, they absolutely do take it very seriously not unlike Apple Private Cloud Compute. I'm not saying to the same standard or the same way. Just the principle of verification of all sides, supporting independent auditing etc. But of course there are always threats and some of the statements you can not verify.


fatTribble said:
Do people really get text messages so long that they require a summary?
I would never want to summarize anything that a friend sent to me.
So I’m really missing the point.
Click to expand...
It’s not the message length, it’s the flood of them. A chat can sit silent for weeks, then erupt with 200 posts in hours once someone suggests an outing: where to go, logistics, kids, dogs, you name it. Step into a meeting or go to lunch, and your muted phone still racks up 73 unread messages before you even rejoin the conversation.

Sometimes I'd rather read "Susan will go" instead of:
Susan 14:13 let me check
Susan 14:24 we’re free but Tom needs to ask his mom about kids
Tom 14:25 she’s out of town this weekend
Pete 14:26 I’ll ask the venue if kids are ok
Tom 14:27 i can stay home if not
Pete 14:31 checking
Pete 14:42 kids are good, they even have a play area
Susan 14:43 perfect, we’re in
Tom 14:44 awesome, see you there
Tom 16:03 uh Sarah has a rash
Susan 16:04 oh no, what kind?
Tom 16:05 dunno, going to the doc
Susan 16:07 we’ll skip if it’s contagious
Pete 16:09 let us know
Tom 16:38 false alarm, just marker lol
Susan 16:39 wow, okay, we’re good
Tom 16:40 see you guys
Susan 21:10 ugh Sarah puked, i’ll stay home with her
Tom 21:11 i’ll still come if that works
Pete 21:13 works for me
Tom 08:09 update: i just got called into work, can’t go
Susan 08:10 Sarah is better, I’ll go instead and take kids
Pete 08:10 ok, see you there Sue!
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: IconicRationalization, JustSomebody12, Janichsan and 1 other person
ZeroInspo said:
Alternate headline: What’sApp it’s making it easier for me to stop using it.

I think LLMs and ””””AI”””” is useful, truly. But I don’t want that **** reading my messages. That’s my red line.
Click to expand...
If only there was a way to not use the feature. Oh, wait …

The feature is optional and turned off by default, giving users control over which chats can use AI features through Advanced Chat Privacy settings.
Click to expand...
 
  • Like
Reactions: freedomlinux, jw2002, deaglecat and 2 others
fatTribble said:
Do people really get text messages so long that they require a summary?
I would never want to summarize anything that a friend sent to me.
So I’m really missing the point.
Click to expand...
I think the use case is more group chats. Like when I come out of a 30 minute meeting to see 75+ unread messages (glares at wife and sister-in-law in “family” group thread).

Edit: @Godspeed8230 beat me to it.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: akuma13, Premium1, fatTribble and 6 others
GoodTimeNotALongTime said:
If only there was a way to not use the feature. Oh, wait …
Click to expand...
That means I have to trust that the toggle actually stops the LLM already built into the code from reading the messages. You can put a toggle on anything saying it does anything but it doesn’t mean that it actually does what it says. Does no one remember that Amazon was saving everyone's conversations, even of people who had opted out from it?
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: GoodTimeNotALongTime, gusmula, tranceking26 and 2 others
and still where is the promised version of WhatsApp for macOS or iPad which if I recall is in eternal final stages of preparation…
 
People here seem to believe they'll use this to read your messages.
...do you realize your messages are already in their servers and you already blindly trust their claims about encryption, right? Why should they wait for AI features to spy on you?
There's absolutely zero logic behind your fear.
 
This feature would have been infinitely more well-received if it didn't have the "AI" label. It is a useful feature, hopefully it isn't generative in the sense that it guesses what the messages are but it just summarizes things that are actually typed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jw2002
guildjw59 said:
and still where is the promised version of WhatsApp for macOS or iPad which if I recall is in eternal final stages of preparation…
Click to expand...
WhatsApp is available on macOS for quite some time (edit: August 2023) and recently (edit: May 2025) even iPadOS finally got its version.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Spiritualized
Not sure about privacy aspect here. Could be useful but I would not use it considering privacy issues.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mganu
Because of the sensitive nature the SumerAIzer left out the line, "Blue is the color belonging to a local, very active, very violent gang."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back