Meta Platforms has launched an AI message summary feature in WhatsApp that allows users to get summarised versions of all their unread messages.

According to Meta, the messages are summarised in a separate chat with the AI bot and not marked as read until the user goes through them.

“Message summaries is a new option that uses Meta AI to privately and quickly summarise unread messages in a chat, so you can get an idea of what is happening, before reading the details in your unread messages,” said Meta.

The company said the message summaries use “private processing”, allowing Meta AI to generate a response without Meta or WhatsApp seeing users’ messages or the private summaries.

Other users in a chat, be it a one-on-one conversation or a WhatsApp group, can’t see that it’s been summarised using artificial intelligence either. “This means your privacy is protected at all times,” said WhatsApp.

The feature is currently only available in the US for English-language users. However, an international roll-out is promised in the coming months.

Disabled by default

The message summarisation feature is disabled by default and users must enable it in WhatsApp settings. An advanced chat privacy feature allows users to select which chats can be used in AI summaries and which cannot.

“We’ve all been there – rushing between meetings, catching up after a flight without Wi-Fi or simply having too many chats to catch up on. Sometimes you just need to quickly catch up on your messages,” said WhatsApp.