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  • WhatsApp’s new AI feature lets you skip the scroll

    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. 

    How to use Private Message Summaries

    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 Messages can now blur unwanted nudes, remind people not to send them

    Google announced last year that it would deploy safety tools in Google Messages to help users avoid unwanted nudes by automatically blurring the content. Now, that feature is finally beginning to roll out. Spicy image-blurring may be enabled by default on some devices, but others will need to turn it on manually. If you don’t see the option yet, don’t fret. Sensitive Content Warnings will arrive on most of the world’s Android phones soon enough.

    If you’re an adult using an unrestricted phone, Sensitive Content Warnings will be disabled by default. For teenagers using unsupervised phones, the feature is enabled but can be disabled in the Messages settings. On supervised kids’ phones, the feature is enabled and cannot be disabled on-device. Only the Family Link administrator can do that. For everyone else, the settings are available in the Messages app settings under Protection and Safety.

    To make the feature sufficiently private, all the detection happens on the device. As a result, there was some consternation among Android users when the necessary components began rolling out over the last few months. For people who carefully control the software installed on their mobile devices, the sudden appearance of a package called SafetyCore was an affront to the sanctity of their phones. While you can remove the app (it’s listed under “Android System SafetyCore”), it doesn’t take up much space and won’t be active unless you enable Sensitive Content Warnings.

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  • Discord is planning an IPO this year, and big changes could be on the horizon

    As previously rumored, Discord, a popular communications platform, is working with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to plan an IPO as soon as this year, according to a recent report by Bloomberg. The report cites people familiar with the matter and notes that more advisors may come on board as the talks progress.

    This isn’t the first we’ve heard about plans for an IPO; an article in The New York Times claimed that Discord had begun exploratory meetings with bankers earlier this month. Even way back in 2022, Discord was exploring the option of a direct listing, but it now seems the company plans to go with a traditional IPO.

    Launched in 2015, Discord was initially conceived as an improved way to facilitate communication while playing video games—and gaming-related uses still account for more than 90 percent of its activity. While some previous tools focused mainly on in-game voice chat, Discord supports text, voice, and video, as well as game streaming. It also has robust features for managing communities outside the game and has developer APIs for developing bots, tools, and games that can be used within its channels.

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