How WhatsApp's New AI Summaries Feature Gives Android Users Access to iPhone's Controversial Feature

WhatsApp’s new Meta AI-powered Message Summaries feature arrives amid growing concerns that the privacy risks of AI features may outweigh their convenience. According to Meta, the new Message Summaries feature generates a synopsis of all unread messages in an individual or group chat, making chats more digestible. It is similar to Apple Intelligence’s Notification Summaries, a feature Apple was forced to pull after accuracy issues drew backlash. But on the flip side, it gives Android users a taste of Apple’s AI-powered summarisation.

What are WhatsApp Message Summaries?

As the name suggests, WhatsApp Message Summaries are the summaries of unread messages generated using the company’s Private Processing technology, which allows Meta AI to offer summaries without Meta or WhatsApp reading your messages. The company claims that even the summaries are not read or accessed, so “your privacy is protected at all times.”

Similarly, the people you are chatting with cannot access these summaries either. The entire summarisation process relies on end-to-end encryption, Meta’s flagship security protocol for WhatsApp. The company has also made this feature optional, meaning WhatsApp is not coercing you to use its new AI tool, allaying privacy concerns.

Meta said Message Summaries will be available to users in the US in English, with broader language and region support expected later this year.

Are Message Summaries Meta’s Version of Apple’s Tool?

In plain sight, WhatsApp will summarise notifications similarly to how Apple Intelligence summarises notifications. The only difference is their scope. WhatsApp’s functionality works for messages received within the app on both Android and iOS. On the other hand, Apple Intelligence offers summaries of notifications across apps, including WhatsApp, just on Apple products like the iPhone and iPad. So, while WhatsApp’s new AI tool introduces the concept of notification summarisation on Android, creating a semblance of Apple’s Notification Summaries may not be the best idea.

When Apple Notifications was introduced last year as part of Apple Intelligence, it landed in several controversies for offering incorrect—and often critically misinformed—summaries for notifications. A few instances involved people panicking because Apple Intelligence misconstrued the original message to sound an alarm. One of these incidents prompted the BBC to sue Apple, which ultimately led to an indefinite suspension of Notification Summaries for certain categories.

The idea was to fix Notification Summaries before it is rolled out again. The iOS 18.4 update reintroduced Notification Summaries with better contextual awareness for notifications. Although the feature is not available for critical notification categories, Apple Intelligence provides summaries for WhatsApp messages—and they are not quite useful, at least in their current implementation. So, maybe WhatsApp’s on-device AI summarisation can be more insightful for users. Still, the off-device AI processing has risks because even the most secure servers can be hacked. Moreover, Meta’s past with data handling and insistence that users access its AI features raises questions on whether WhatsApp’s new feature will provide convenience without stress.

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