Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 Get the AI Feature That Almost Killed Apple’s PR

Sunday, 30 November 2025 at 14:01

You probably remember this mess. Last year, Apple rolled out an AI feature that created summaries for notifications. Sounds great, right? Wrong. The feature—part of Apple Intelligence—got totally torpedoed because the AI was hallucinating, turning real news stories into flat-out fake news. Remember that BBC story about a murder suspect where the summary falsely claimed the person shot himself? The BBC was not happy.

Apple had to scramble, pausing news summaries and making the AI icon much clearer (by making the summary text appear entirely in italics).

Here Comes Google (But They’re Playing It Safe)

Now, Google is rolling out its own version as part of the November 2025 Pixel Drop: AI Summaries for notifications. They clearly paid attention to Apple's mistakes.

Google's feature is designed for one thing: giving you the key points of longer messages before you even open the app. That lets you decide if a conversation in WhatsApp or Google Messages is worth interrupting your day for—or if you can just ignore it.

The Big Difference: Google is starting small. Their AI Summaries are limited to messaging apps (like Google Messages and WhatsApp), specifically avoiding the general news summaries that caused Apple all the trouble.
The Requirement: This feature only works on longer messages that actually need summarizing. No AI sparkling icon for a single "k."
Availability: This is a feature for the new guard: Pixel 9 and all later models (except the budget Pixel 9a). Sorry, Pixel 8 and older owners, it's not looking likely for a backport, though Google has surprised us before.

How to Use It (And What to Watch Out For)

When a message is summarized, you'll see the Gemini AI sparkle icon next to it. That's your visual cue that the AI has done the reading for you.

To enable it:

Go to Settings.
Tap Notifications.
Select Notification Summaries and toggle it On.

Quick Troubleshooting: If you turn it on and it's not working, check two things:

Battery Saver: This mode automatically turns the feature off to save power. Turn it off!
Connectivity: Make sure you're connected to a network, and sometimes a quick restart helps finalize the update.

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Want to keep one chat app off the summary list? No problem. In the Notification Summaries menu, go to "Manage Apps" under the "Don't include these apps" heading and turn the toggle off for any app you want to exclude.

It’s all about efficiency. If the summary tells you the 15-message group chat is just about dinner plans next week, you can happily leave it for later. Google is using AI to give you your time back—carefully.