Meta announced on the integration of an AI-powered summaries feature into WhatsApp, leveraging Meta AI to summarize unread chat messages for individual users.
The functionality builds upon a foundational AI technology released by Meta in April 2025. This earlier development enabled the implementation of AI features without compromising the platform’s encryption protocols or user privacy.
The company stated that the “Message Summaries” capability utilizes “Private Processing technology.” This ensures that Meta AI can generate a summary response without Meta or WhatsApp gaining access to the user’s messages or the generated private summaries. The feature is designed such that no other participant in a chat can discern that a user has utilized the summary function for unread messages.
The feature is not activated by default. WhatsApp indicates its availability to the user through a small icon. The initial deployment of this feature targets the United States market and supports the English language. Meta has articulated plans to extend its availability to additional countries and languages later in 2025.
Prior to this update, WhatsApp users could engage with Meta AI within chat interfaces for general inquiries. Users also had the option to tag specific messages to provide context to the chatbot. However, Meta AI lacked the capability to directly read the content of user messages.
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The company clarified that a new underlying technological framework now allows WhatsApp to access chat context in a private manner for AI processing. This advancement facilitates not only message summarization but also the provision of writing suggestions within the application. These new AI-powered functions are managed through a dedicated section within the application’s settings, accessible via Settings > Chats > Private Processing, where users can individually enable or disable these capabilities.
