this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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Privacy

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cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/215685

WhatsApp can now call on Meta AI to summarize your personal chats. As shown in a GIF, you can access it by tapping the button to unfurl all of your unread messages in a chat. But instead of showing your messages, WhatsApp uses Meta AI to generate a bulleted summary of what you missed.

The feature is rolling out in English in the US, with plans to launch in more countries and languages later this year. It uses Meta’s Private Processing technology, which the company claims will prevent it and other third parties from snooping on your messages.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, says its AI message summaries are optional, and the feature is turned off by default. You can also use WhatsApp’s “Advanced Privacy” setting to prevent users from using AI features in group chats.  We still don’t know if WhatsApp’s AI message summaries will struggle with accuracy, which is something we saw with the launch of Apple’s AI-generated message and notification rundowns.

Over the past year, Meta has continued stuffing different AI features into WhatsApp, including a way to ask Meta AI questions from within a chat, as well as a feature that generates images in real-time. Some users have grown frustrated by the new Meta AI button in the bottom-right corner of the app that they can’t turn off or remove. Meta also sparked backlash with another change that brought ads to the app — something its founders said they never wanted to do.

The app’s Private Processing is supposed to conceal your interactions with its AI model by creating a “secure cloud environment,” preventing Meta or WhatsApp from seeing your summaries. Other people in the group chat won’t be able to see the message summaries, either.


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[–] SilliusMaximus@mander.xyz 2 points 3 hours ago

I'm kinda sick of EVERYTHING having it's own "AI", I just hope it's only a passing phase like it was with crypto

[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 hours ago

ummm no. I don't want Meta to access my chats.

[–] evildog@lemmy.eco.br 4 points 9 hours ago

Meta wants a wave of stupids. People will not have the capacity to read a simple message with this shit!

[–] teagrrl@lemmy.ml 12 points 18 hours ago

Wow, nothing says I love you like letting an AI summarize your spouse's feelings into "vibes: bad"

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 19 points 20 hours ago

How fucking lazy can you get, to not be bothered reading a text?!?

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 24 points 1 day ago

Still claiming WA messages are e2ee? The MITM is even paraphrasing the content back to you.

[–] CoyoteFacts@piefed.ca 72 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I know this is not a unique sentiment by any means, but it makes me legitimately angry to think of participating in a conversation where someone else is using this. If you don't want to read my messages why are we even connecting; imagine clicking "summarize" on someone genuinely trying to talk to you. "Sorry, the AI hallucinated that you were going to finish the rest of the assignment tonight." and a year later "Sorry, I forgot all the nuances of who you are as a person because an AI didn't think they were relevant."

[–] Rose@lemmy.zip 5 points 17 hours ago

Hardly an AI problem though. Many people talk just to hear themselves talk rather than care to listen. Many will stare at their phone when in a real world conversation.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

not that we should accept this, but all mainstream social media does this already. i "lost" quite a bunch of "friendships" when i noticed it. and im glad i did.

[–] 7112@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The underlining issue is that people are being forced to do so much at once they skip whatever they can. We already seen intimacy suffer and AI is another "shortcut" that allows us to do more work and care less about community.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Are you not in any group chats with 50 people trying to organize something? They become a cluster fuck.

For direct chats, totally agreed. I'd be seriously insulted if you used an ai to talk in a 1:1 conversation.

[–] CoyoteFacts@piefed.ca 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That really seems like a structural problem to me. Break it out into more-focused teams, signify important people whose messages you should pay attention to, or use threads to consolidate topics. If those things aren't being done and there's just 50+ people dumping information then the information can't be deemed important. Adding AI to patch the issue is poor management at best and introducing poisoned information at worst.

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

I assume they mean social group chats. You’re not gonna get the lads to form a breakout team to organise the stag.

[–] timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Why would Anyone do anything productive like that with that many people over a WhatsApp group

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago

Because it’s the only app most normal people have. That or fb messenger.

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Getting closer and closer to just wandering naked into the woods forever

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Someone owns those woods. If you walk into them you will be trespassing

Not every country is quite as ridiculous with private property. For example in Scandinavian countries they have the “everymans right”, which basically says that, within reasonable limits, owning property doesnt mean no one else can pass through it or use it to fulfill basic human needs for a few days

[–] auraithx@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

OSX already does this so many will be. I don’t use it when I’m texting something but it helps me follow group chats id usually ignore or if my wife has texted me a bunch of stuff I’ll see a quick summary including ‘make sure to do x’

[–] BeBopaLula@piefed.ca 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You’re still using whatsapp? Tsk tsk.

[–] FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What’s the alternative(s) you use and enjoy?

[–] BeBopaLula@piefed.ca 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I am anecdotal, almost 70. So my data does not really count as I do not do much. I use text for family and Signal for anything else. Quit all the other services pretty much except Lemmy/Piefed have accounts on Bluesky and mastodon but I don’t say anything so far on them. I save my yelling at the clouds for here.

[–] FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

🥺

I imagine you were into tech and computers when you were younger? That’s really rare to see amongst elders I believe

[–] BeBopaLula@piefed.ca 8 points 1 day ago

Retired puter consultant. Was in the biz for over 40yrs.

[–] Moonworm@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh yeah we're totally not going to ever peek even a little at all your private communications even though we're now explicitly collecting them to feed into an LLM. It's a secure cloud environment!

[–] FuckBigTech347@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It has a green lock icon with the word "Private" next to it so it's fine bro. western-journalist

[–] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The worst part is that I know people that will use this regularly and also know people I'd be tempted to use it with because of their walls of text that I usually ignore.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Would you be more offended by someone using AI to decipher your wall of text then if they ignored you?

[–] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago

I'm not sure which one is worse, either tells me that they didn't bother reading the message. It is hard for me to relate because I try to do my best to not send ted talk to a group chat.

Maybe I'd rather be ignored if they're not interested.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Let's whack the engineer that thought this was a good idea.