Meta Adds AI-Powered Chat Summaries to WhatsApp: Here’s How It Works

Meta is making WhatsApp a little smarter with the introduction of a new AI-powered feature designed to help you catch up on unread messages. Announced on Wednesday, this feature lets Meta AI create quick summaries of messages you haven’t read yet—saving you from having to scroll endlessly through long conversations. The best part? These summaries are only visible to you, so your chats stay just as private as before.

The new message summarization tool is built on Meta’s Private Processing technology, which was first introduced in April. This ensures that your privacy stays protected. Neither Meta nor WhatsApp can read your messages or even see the AI-generated summaries. Plus, no one in the chat will know you’ve used the summary tool—everything remains discreet and secure.

Though this feature is off by default, WhatsApp will show a small icon in chats where the feature is available, giving you the choice to turn it on if you’d like to try it. For now, the rollout is limited to users in the U.S. with English language support, but Meta plans to expand to other countries and languages later this year.

Previously, Meta AI in WhatsApp was limited to answering general questions or responding when you tagged a specific message for context. It couldn’t actually read or summarize your chats. That changes with the new update, which now allows the AI to access chat context in a way that’s still private and secure, enabling it to summarize conversations or even help you with writing suggestions.

Here’s How It Works

When you turn on the new message summary feature, Meta AI quietly scans your unread messages and creates a short, easy-to-understand summary just for you. This helps you quickly catch up on what you missed without opening every single message. The process happens privately on your device using Meta’s “Private Processing” technology, meaning your messages and summaries stay completely secure and hidden from Meta, WhatsApp, and everyone else in the chat. You’ll see a small icon in eligible chats letting you know the feature is available, and you can enable or disable it anytime by heading to Settings > Chats > Private Processing.