Meta Rolls Out AI Chat Summaries on WhatsApp to Help Users Catch Up on Missed Messages

Meta is enhancing WhatsApp with AI-driven chat summarisation, aiming to solve one of the most common problems faced by users — unread message overload.

Starting with users in the United States, WhatsApp is now introducing a new tool called “Message Summaries,” which leverages Meta’s AI infrastructure to produce brief, readable overviews of unread messages. The feature is designed to help users stay informed without scrolling through long threads, especially in busy group chats or during work hours.

According to Meta, privacy remains a top priority. All summaries are generated using the company’s “Private Processing” system, meaning that no human, not even Meta itself, can read the messages or the summaries. End-to-end encryption is still in place, and summaries are visible only to the user.

“No one else in the chat will know that you’ve used this feature,” the company confirmed in a blog update. “It’s optional and disabled by default.”

This move is part of Meta’s broader strategy to embed AI seamlessly across its platforms. Earlier this year, Meta AI became available within WhatsApp to answer general questions and assist users within chats. However, it couldn’t access message content directly — until now. With this update, AI can use limited, encrypted data to perform summarisation or suggest responses in real time, without compromising message privacy.

To activate Message Summaries, users can navigate to:
Settings > Chats > Private Processing, where the feature can be toggled as needed.

Currently, the feature supports only the English language and is available for WhatsApp users in the U.S. Meta has indicated that support for more regions and languages is on the roadmap.

By taking this step, Meta is clearly signalling its commitment to combining AI utility with privacy-centric innovation, a balancing act that continues to define the future of messaging platforms.