Viber, or Rakuten Viber, has introduced a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered feature for users. The cross-platform instant messaging platform is offering a chat summarisation feature that will allow users to get up-to-date with unread messages with a brief summary using AI. The feature is being rolled out to select regions, and the company has revealed that it plans to expand it to more regions soon. Notably, Google offers a similar feature with its Gemini AI where it allows users to get Google Chat conversation summaries in Spaces.
The announcement was made by Rakuten, the parent company of Viber, via a press release. The company revealed that the AI feature is powered by OpenAI's GPT models. The chat summary feature is currently only available in group chats, and not in individual conversations. The company said, “The AI summarizer extracts the most important parts of a user's group conversations and, in an instant, concisely conveys in bullet points what has been discussed.”
As per the company, the AI can summarise up to 100 unread messages. When a user enters a group chat with multiple unread messages, they will be prompted to receive an optional summary of the missed part of the conversation. If the user clicks on the icon, the AI will send a message with the key portions of the conversation conveyed in bullet points. The company said that this feature will save users' time in scrolling up to go through multiple messages to understand the context of the situation. It will also help in not missing any important conversations.
To protect privacy, the feature will not include any identifiers in its summary beyond usernames. As a result, specific conversations cannot be externally connected to any group members. The company also reassured that Viber does not access or save conversations or summaries on its servers, ensuring the privacy and data security of users. For reference, this feature works similarly to the conversation summary feature in Google Chat in Spaces, which was introduced last year.
Currently, the feature is being rolled out to the US, the Philippines, Ukraine, Japan, Bulgaria, and Poland. The company said more countries and regions will get the feature soon. The AI chat summary feature is available on both Android and iOS and supports more than 50 languages.
