Android is finally bringing AI notification summaries to chat apps

Android 16 is expected to bring big changes to the notification system this year, including notification summaries. Google hopes to improve how notifications are sent, especially with the overwhelming number of messages received every day.

Notification summaries are finally coming to Android later this year, though they might be Pixel-exclusive at launch. They are expected to summarize conversation messages only and will work in a more conservative manner than what we’ve seen from others.

Apple’s implementation of notification summaries came under fire recently after users found it to be inconsistent, and at times, plain wrong, especially with shorter messages or news articles. Google is sidestepping this entirely by limiting the summaries to conversations only, that too larger than a set limit.

Mishaal Rahman of Android Authority has given details as to what filters Google will use to make it blend in. First, it will only work with longer messages, specifically those that are in the 25-200 word range, with a maximum of 50 summaries per day.

Other than this, notifications for news and other entertainment channels will not be summarised as they can potentially be misinterpreted. Google understands that summaries using genAI may not be entirely accurate, which is why it also includes a disclaimer when enabling the feature: “Summaries are AI-powered and may contain errors.“

In the QPR1 beta updates for Android 16, industry insiders also spotted other features like “notification bundling.” They work by reading a stack of missed notifications and sorting them into one of the four categories: promotions, news, social, and recommendations.

Google may introduce this feature as a Pixel Drop before pushing it to other devices, potentially to only those that support Gemini Nano locally.