Meta is adding AI-powered summaries to WhatsApp

Meta announced on Wednesday that it’s adding an AI-powered summaries feature to WhatsApp. The optional new feature uses Meta AI to summarize unread messages in a chat.

This summary would only be visible to you, not others in your chat, the company notes.

The feature builds on the AI technology that Meta released in April, which allowed the company to implement AI features that don’t impact encryption or user privacy.

“Message Summaries uses Private Processing technology, which allows Meta AI to generate a response without Meta or WhatsApp ever seeing your messages or the private summaries. No one else in the chat can see that you summarized unread messages either,” the company said in a blog post.

While the feature is turned off by default, WhatsApp shows a little icon to indicate that the feature is available for you.

Meta is initially rolling out the feature in the U.S. with English language support. It will reach more countries and languages later this year.

Until now, users could access Meta AI within the chat to ask general questions or tag a message to give the chatbot context. However, Meta AI couldn’t read your messages.

Meta said that the new stack allows WhatsApp to access context from your chat privately to process requests through its AI. This allows it to summarize messages or provide writing suggestions.

The new AI-powered features are available under a new setting that can be accessed via Settings > Chats > Private Processing, which lets you turn on or off individual functions.