cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/215685
WhatsApp can now call on Meta AI to summarize your personal chats. As shown in a GIF, you can access it by tapping the button to unfurl all of your unread messages in a chat. But instead of showing your messages, WhatsApp uses Meta AI to generate a bulleted summary of what you missed.
The feature is rolling out in English in the US, with plans to launch in more countries and languages later this year. It uses Meta’s Private Processing technology, which the company claims will prevent it and other third parties from snooping on your messages.
WhatsApp, which is owned by Meta, says its AI message summaries are optional, and the feature is turned off by default. You can also use WhatsApp’s “Advanced Privacy” setting to prevent users from using AI features in group chats. We still don’t know if WhatsApp’s AI message summaries will struggle with accuracy, which is something we saw with the launch of Apple’s AI-generated message and notification rundowns.
Over the past year, Meta has continued stuffing different AI features into WhatsApp, including a way to ask Meta AI questions from within a chat, as well as a feature that generates images in real-time. Some users have grown frustrated by the new Meta AI button in the bottom-right corner of the app that they can’t turn off or remove. Meta also sparked backlash with another change that brought ads to the app — something its founders said they never wanted to do.
The app’s Private Processing is supposed to conceal your interactions with its AI model by creating a “secure cloud environment,” preventing Meta or WhatsApp from seeing your summaries. Other people in the group chat won’t be able to see the message summaries, either.
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I know this is not a unique sentiment by any means, but it makes me legitimately angry to think of participating in a conversation where someone else is using this. If you don't want to read my messages why are we even connecting; imagine clicking "summarize" on someone genuinely trying to talk to you. "Sorry, the AI hallucinated that you were going to finish the rest of the assignment tonight." and a year later "Sorry, I forgot all the nuances of who you are as a person because an AI didn't think they were relevant."
Hardly an AI problem though. Many people talk just to hear themselves talk rather than care to listen. Many will stare at their phone when in a real world conversation.
not that we should accept this, but all mainstream social media does this already. i "lost" quite a bunch of "friendships" when i noticed it. and im glad i did.
The underlining issue is that people are being forced to do so much at once they skip whatever they can. We already seen intimacy suffer and AI is another "shortcut" that allows us to do more work and care less about community.
Are you not in any group chats with 50 people trying to organize something? They become a cluster fuck.
For direct chats, totally agreed. I'd be seriously insulted if you used an ai to talk in a 1:1 conversation.
That really seems like a structural problem to me. Break it out into more-focused teams, signify important people whose messages you should pay attention to, or use threads to consolidate topics. If those things aren't being done and there's just 50+ people dumping information then the information can't be deemed important. Adding AI to patch the issue is poor management at best and introducing poisoned information at worst.
I assume they mean social group chats. You’re not gonna get the lads to form a breakout team to organise the stag.
Why would Anyone do anything productive like that with that many people over a WhatsApp group
Because it’s the only app most normal people have. That or fb messenger.
Getting closer and closer to just wandering naked into the woods forever
Someone owns those woods. If you walk into them you will be trespassing
Not every country is quite as ridiculous with private property. For example in Scandinavian countries they have the “everymans right”, which basically says that, within reasonable limits, owning property doesnt mean no one else can pass through it or use it to fulfill basic human needs for a few days
OSX already does this so many will be. I don’t use it when I’m texting something but it helps me follow group chats id usually ignore or if my wife has texted me a bunch of stuff I’ll see a quick summary including ‘make sure to do x’