Technology @lemmy.world Pro @programming.dev 1w ago

Meta is Adding AI-Powered Summaries to WhatsApp

blog.whatsapp.com Catch up on conversations with Private Message Summaries

We're excited to introduce Message Summaries, a new option that 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.

LOL

Technology @programming.dev Pro @programming.dev 1w ago

Meta is adding AI-powered summaries to WhatsApp

blog.whatsapp.com /catch-up-on-conversations-with-private-message-summaries

32 comments

And just like that, end-to-end encryption vanishes again.
Bros got that 9:100 phone
LOL

Hey Meta AI, can you summarize that for me?
- ShaggySnacks had a good laugh
And with that, room for misinterpretation.
Meta can fuck off. The moment this shit appears I'm going 100% Signal.
- Why not do it now?
  
  I'm already on Signal but nobody else is.
  
  Everyone has whatsapp and not signal is pretty much the gist of it
  
  My family uses it, work uses it, Microsoft 2FA uses it. It's a hassle to try to change what other people use.
- Why wait? Why not switch now?
In other words, meta is harvesting your WhatsApp data, and gives you a (potentially inaccurate) summary in exchange for feeding their LLMs.
- They've always harvested your data but they haven't done the actual contents of the message
Seems like a Trojan horse to get users to grant access to their encrypted chats?
I'm interested in how they've allegedly achieved this working without anyone but you having access to the unencrypted messages.

Don't get me wrong, I want none of this shit in a messaging app, but I'm at least interested in how that is supposed to work.
- From what I gather the texts are encrypted and sent to their LLMs that process it with some mechanism to verify the code being run in the cloud to process the texts is one that the WhatsApp app agreed to.
  
  But they could just as well start siphoning the data after changing that code. Everyone will be able to see the cloud code changed if/when tbat happens but I don't think there's a way to differentiate that from a regular update.
  
  Don't think theyve opensourced any of this
  
  Fascinating. Just based on your comment and nothing else, sounds like it could be something like a CPU Enclave like Intel SGX. Basically a remote client can validate that an application runs in a secure part of a remote cloud computer. The stated goal of SGX is that you only have to trust Intel and if you trust Intel and say run program X in the enclave, then only that part of the CPU can access the data, not the applications running in the non-secure enclave.
  
  Now that brushes over some things like you still need to trust the client and IIRC in a WhatsApp situation, you don't really know what enclave does, but the communications between the enclave and the host OS are heavily restricted. LLMs also require lots of CPU and are usually run on GPUs, so not sure how that works yet.
  
  They might publish components of it enough to verify that the processing code is not emitting any data but as others said - it could've been done locally on the phone
- It could run entirely on-device.
  
  According to Meta it runs on their private servers
- https://engineering.fb.com/2025/04/29/security/whatsapp-private-processing-ai-tools/
it’s surprising this feature is opt-in. either way, fuck meta.
Did anyone ask for this, it's a messaging app
- probably the owner of the pictured ~~sword~~ phone
Yes!!! Keep enshittifying! Yes! nods menacingly
This sounds like it might be useful for some people who get lots of messages, like businesses at least, but I just don’t trust Meta.
- Also, I wouldn't trust a hallucinating LLM with my business messages honestly.

32 comments