Google Is Cautiously Experimenting With One of Apple’s Most Controversial AI Features

Google is adding one of the iPhone's most controversial features to its latest Pixel phones, but it's promising to show a bit more restraint than Apple did. Yes, as part of the November 2025 Pixel feature drop, Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 phones (excluding the Pixel 9a) are getting AI notification summaries.

The problem with AI notification summaries

If you're reeling back after reading that, I don't blame you. This is one of the few AI features Apple beat Google to the punch on, and when they came out during the iOS 18.3 beta, the summaries were quickly criticized for handling hard topics like breakups with a cold tone, as well as for misreporting the news.

Apple quickly pulled news summaries (although they've since come back) and made it clearer when an AI was writing a notification, but it seems Google's still being a bit more cautious with its launch.

How AI Notification Summaries on Pixel work

Credit: Google

Rather than trying to organize every notification you might get, Google's AI Summaries are just starting off with popular chat apps for now, including its own Messages app and alternatives like WhatsApp. Additionally, they'll only kick in on "longer chats," with the idea being to give you, "digestible conversation recaps."

That means you're going to see far fewer AI notifications than on the iPhone, which currently uses them for news, entertainment, chats, email, and more. That's probably a safer approach for Google, but it does mean the AI summaries are meant to be used more to get you quickly back up to speed, rather than for organization (although that will change in the future).

As on the iPhone, AI notification summaries on the Pixel will be indicated by a small icon with a sparkle and a few lines below it, with the summary following. They'll also be italicized for additional visual distinction.

How to turn on AI Notification Summaries on Pixel

Google is also exercising caution by making its AI notification summaries entirely opt-in. That means you'll need to manually turn them on before you start seeing them, which you can do under Settings > Notifications > Notification Summaries. While on this page, you'll also be able to exclude certain apps from sending AI notification summaries, by adding them to the "Don't include these apps" list.

If you're still not seeing the summaries after enabling them, ensure your Android System Intelligence is enabled under Settings > Notifications > Privacy > Notification read, reply & control. Additionally, summaries will not be generated while your phone is in battery saver mode, or while you're actively using it (per Google, for them to kick in, "the screen must be off for a moment").

When will my Pixel get AI Notification Summaries?

AI Notification summaries start rolling out today, alongside the November system patch. However, they're not automatically included in the downloadable patch, so it might be a while before you see them (I don't have them yet).

It's still not a bad idea to get your phone fully up-to-date in the meantime. To download the November 2025 Pixel update, either wait for a notification from Google, or head to Settings > System > Software updates to manually check if it's been rolled out to you yet.

What's next for Pixel's AI Notification Summaries?

While today's update is clearly just Google dipping its toes in the water, the company does have bigger plans for December, where some Pixels will also start automatically silencing "lower-priority notifications" and will start automatically sorting them into categories like "News" and "Promotions." Hopefully, Google will have learned some lessons from Apple by the time those features go live.

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