If you’ve ever opened a group chat on WhatsApp and felt a knot in your stomach at the sight of endless unread messages, help is at hand.
Meta-owned WhatsApp has just announced Private Message Summaries, which does what it says on the tin by offering an overview of your unread messages, saving you from endless scrolling as you try to get your head around the content of a conversation.
In the company’s own words, WhatsApp’s new Private Message Summaries feature uses Meta AI “to privately and quickly summarize unread messages in a chat, so you can get an idea of what is happening, before reading the details in your unread messages.”
Message Summaries uses Meta’s Private Processing technology. This allows Meta’s AI smarts to create a response without Meta or WhatsApp ever seeing your messages or the private summaries.
Additionally, others in the chat won’t know that you chose to summarize your unread messages.
Private Message Summaries won’t automatically appear. Instead, you’ll see a “summarize privately” message appear intermittently on the same button that displays how many unread messages you have. Simply tap on the button to bring up a summary of your undead messages.
Message Summaries is rolling out in English to U.S.-based users, with WhatsApp aiming to bring it to other languages and countries later this year.
Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the you-know-what, so try it out for yourself to gauge the accuracy of WhatsApp’s new Private Message Summaries feature. We certainly hope it’ll be free of the mishaps that plagued Apple’s much-mocked AI-powered notification summaries, which made headlines for all the wrong reasons toward the end of last year.
In other WhatsApp news, Meta recently announced that ads are coming to the messaging app for the first time in its 16-year history … though you may never see them.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Samsung’s scandal over its Game Optimizing Service, or GOS, has returned with a bill attached. South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has tentatively fined the company 20.1 billion won, or about $15.1 million, over gaming claims made for the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S22, and Tab S8.
The regulator says Samsung promoted the devices as gaming powerhouses without disclosing that GOS placed preset CPU and GPU limits on certain demanding games. Samsung disputes that conclusion, calling GOS a legitimate way to manage heat.
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The rumored camera setup includes a single 48MP rear camera and a possible 24MP selfie camera. There's new hardware to consider, but buyers hoping Apple would extend that upgrade generosity to smoother scrolling could be disappointed.