WhatsApp tests optional feature to summarise long chats

WhatsApp is gearing up to launch an innovative feature dubbed 'Quick Recap', promising to transform how users manage their unread messages.

This tool will leverage Meta AI to provide detailed summaries of unread messages across multiple selected conversations, saving users significant time and effort, according to WABetaInfo.

Unlike the current basic message overviews, Quick Recap aims to offer a more comprehensive understanding of missed chats without requiring users to scroll through lengthy threads. This marks a significant step forward in enhancing user experience on Meta's popular instant messaging platform.

The feature, which is scheduled for release in a future update, incorporates Private Processing, a dedicated privacy-preserving environment, before any processing takes place.

This ensures that the raw message content remains within a secure enclave and is never exposed in a readable form.

In practical terms, users will be able to open the Chats tab, choose up to five conversations, and tap on a new icon labelled Quick Recap.

When this action is triggered, Private Processing immediately gets to work, securely preparing unread messages so that Meta AI can generate a recap without ever exposing personal information.

After a few moments, the user receives a concise summary of the most relevant unread messages in each selected conversation, helping them save time and effort.

It's worth noting that Quick Recap will only support up to five chats at a time. This means that if users want summaries for more conversations, they will need to run the process again for other groups or individual chats.

In addition, chats protected by Advanced Chat Privacy cannot be included in Quick Recap. This restriction is not due to any weakness in the architecture behind Private Processing, but rather out of respect for those users who have explicitly chosen to exclude AI-powered features from specific conversations.

As with other AI-powered tools in WhatsApp, Quick Recap will be entirely optional. The feature will not be enabled by default, as users must enable it manually through the app settings.

By design, this will empower users to decide if, when, and how they want to leverage Quick Recap according to their own preferences and comfort level. The new feature is under development.