Meta is adding a new Message Summaries feature to WhatsApp that uses AI to summarize unread messages in a few bullet points. The feature is built on the Private Processing technique Meta announced at Llamacon in April, and claims to let AI work with content in WhatsApp without exposing any of it to Meta itself.
Once the feature appears in your app, you just tap on the onscreen banner over your unread messages with that says “Summarize privately” to receive a summary from Meta AI. The Message Summaries feature is rolling out to WhatsApp users in the US chatting in English first, but Meta says it hopes to “bring it to other languages and countries later this year.”
The company pitches summaries as an easier way to catch-up on what you missed if you haven't checked your phone or you're just in too many chats. AI is by no means foolproof at even simple tasks like this — Apple's trouble with notification summaries was only a few months ago — but the tool could be appealing to people in particularly large and active chats.
The real novelty of the summaries is how Meta claims to be deploying them without walking back the private nature of WhatsApp chats. The company has a blog post and whitepaper digging into the details of how Private Processing works, but on first blush it sounds similar to Private Cloud Compute, the method Apple uses to call on more demanding AI features without exposing its users' data. Using end-to-end encryption and a secure cloud environment, WhatsApp messages can be processed without data being accessed while its happening, or saved after the fact.
Importantly, all of this is still optional. Summaries won't be provided without you asking for them first, and the feature is disabled by default. Meta also says you can exclude chats from being shared with the company's AI via the Advanced Chat Privacy feature.
