Make your mix-ups and misunderstandings faster and more efficient with AI
WhatsApp’s new AI feature, which it calls “Message Summaries”, has now been released.
The feature was announced last month and has since been in testing. Now, it’s stable and ready to roll.
At this stage, it’s only available in the US and only in the English language, but it’s expected to come out in more countries, with support for more languages in the future.
“Message Summaries” allows you to tap on the unread message count in a chat and get Meta’s AI to summarise what you’ve missed. The summary will only be visible to you.
WhatsApp conceives that you’ll use the function to catch up on chats that have become overwhelming or where you need to get up to speed quickly.
“Message Summaries” will be switched off by default. Here’s why I don’t think you should switch it on.
AI often gets it wrong
The first, and biggest problem, is that AI isn’t yet accurate enough to do all the jobs it’s being asked to.
Do a quick Google search now, and there’s a good chance you’ll see a Gemini AI overview at the top of the page. But beneath the information it produces, you’ll see a note that reads: “AI responses may include mistakes”.
Foundry
That’s pretty incredible for a service whose sole job is to provide you with accurate information, isn’t it? It’s like buying a packet of cookies and reading on the label: “Some of these cookies may not actually be food.”
I’m not saying that Meta’s AI is notably worse than rival large language models, such as Google Gemini or ChatGPT, but all models still have issues, in spite of their widespread adoption. ChatGPT’s o3 model was recently found to hallucinate – providing plausible-sounding but false information – in 33% of answers to questions about publicly available facts.
