Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has introduced a new Message Summaries feature for US users.
The feature, released on Wednesday, leverages Meta AI to quickly summarise unread messages in a private chat before users delve into the details.
Message Summaries employs private-processing technology, ensuring end-to-end encryption of user communications and summaries. To protect privacy, no other participants in the chat are aware that the feature is being used.
“We’re excited to introduce Message Summaries, a new option that uses Meta AI to privately and quickly summarise unread messages in a chat so you can get an idea of what is happening before reading the details in your unread messages,” WhatsApp stated in its official release.
Currently, the summaries are available in English. The company plans to roll out the feature in additional languages and countries.
Based on the GIF provided by WhatsApp, users can tap the number of unread messages in a chat to receive a quick summary from Meta AI. These summaries are accessible only to the user, who can opt out at any time. The accuracy of these summaries has yet to be determined.
WhatsApp has made the feature optional, allowing users to disable it if desired. To enable the feature, users must select “summarise privately” from the unread-messages tab for individual chats.
Congress Bans WhatsApp
As per a recent Reuters report, WhatsApp messaging service has reportedly been banned from all US House of Representatives devices.
The notice stated that the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored-data encryption and potential security risks involved with its use.” Instead, employees are advised to use applications such as Signal, iMessage, FaceTime and Microsoft Teams.
Meta announced in January that it had detected and thwarted a hacking campaign targeting approximately 90 WhatsApp users, including journalists and civil-society representatives.
The intrusion was linked to Paragon Solutions, an Israeli spyware company acquired by American private-equity firm AE Industrial Partners in December of the previous year. A May research report indicated that Paragon’s likely customers include the governments of Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel and Singapore.
