Meta AI can summarize your unread WhatsApp messages now – how to try it

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Meta is introducing a new AI-powered feature into WhatsApp designed to summarize unread messages.

The feature, called Message Summaries, was announced Wednesday in a WhatsApp company blog post. Message Summaries leverages Meta AI to provide brief, bulleted lists outlining key points from a message chain on the social messaging app. It’s built upon Meta’s Private Processing technology, which means the summaries are conveyed privately to users without any of the information being shared with Meta or WhatsApp. 

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Message Summaries appear at the top of WhatsApp message chains as a small, rectangular icon listing the number of unread messages in the chat. Simply tap the icon, and Meta AI will generate a bulleted list of high-level key points extracted from the messages.

The feature is intended to provide users with quick updates when they don’t have time to dig into the full contents of a message thread — for example, when they’re quickly checking their phone in between meetings. 

Apple introduced a similar AI-powered text-summarization feature in October as part of its Apple Intelligence software package. 

Meta AI, the company’s suite of AI products and services, was first integrated with WhatsApp in September 2023 when it was rolled out as a circular blue button users could press to interact with an AI assistant. The company received some backlash over concerns that the integration would jeopardize user privacy, prompting it to introduce a new Advanced Chat Privacy setting in April.

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The company’s ongoing effort to fuse Meta AI into WhatsApp — widely considered to be the world’s most popular messaging app — is part of a broader trend among tech companies to make AI accessible within helpful daily tools. Earlier this month, for example, OpenAI announced that its image-generating AI feature could also now be accessed via WhatsApp.

How to try it

Message Summaries is optional for users and turned off by default. To activate, open your WhatsApp account and toggle to Settings > Chats > Private Processing. You can also select which chats you’d like Meta AI to be able to access (or not) via Advanced Chat Privacy.

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Message Summaries is currently being rolled out in English across the US. The company said in a blog post that it hopes to make the feature available across more languages and countries later this year. 

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