The Problem With Suggested Summaries

2026-05-10

I usually ignore the various AI popups included in all of my apps. If a human wrote it, I'd rather read it in full. Today, I've finally found one that felt insulting and intentionally isolating. GroupMe decided that a private message deserves a button at the bottom to request a summary from a LLM.

Not a blog post, not an announcement in a group, not even an essay of a text. A 200-word message in a DM.

There's important things to say about how these summaries might lie to us because of the nature of LLMs. I'll leave them for someone else talking about something else, because in this case the feature working as intended encourages bad habits and assumes awful things about the user. It disrespects my attention span and it disrespects the person I'm messaging.

Furthermore, it encourages living in a way fundamentally out of touch with reality. In real life, I can't summarize my friend, even if I may think they talk too much¹. A "summarize button" encourages living life disconnected, despite the purpose of communication tech: to connect us. Relationships are a matter of time spent caring about one another, not information. Even if it were a matter of information, I want the words my friend intended for me, not the words of an electrified rock pretending to speak English.

Please, if you are ever presented with this button, resist the temptation to shortcut. Remember that on the other side of the phone there exists a real human, living in a real place, taking real time to read your words as written². You should do them the same favor.

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