After two months with the Pixel 10's newest AI feature, I found a serious catch

When Google rolled out AI-powered notification summaries to Pixel 10 and Pixel 9 phones in November, there was justified concern about the new feature. We had all seen how poorly Apple’s notification summaries could be, so bringing that same functionality to Android was bound to be equally terrible. Right?

As it turns out, it’s not. I’ve been using AI Notification Summaries on my Pixel 10 for over two months now, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised every time I’ve seen them.

Unfortunately, there’s just one problem that’s severely holding the feature back.

When they work, AI Notification Summaries are excellent

AI Notification Summaries on Pixel phones work almost exactly the same as Apple’s Summarize Notifications feature on the iPhone. When you receive a long notification with a lot of text, your Pixel uses AI to summarize it into a much shorter, more glanceable version.

One of the first Notification Summaries I got was a text message from my cat’s vet. It was a standard follow-up text that said very little, though it took up a lot of space in my notification tray. Here’s the message in its entirety:

“Hello Joe! This is Pet Vet Family Pet Care Center following up on Minnie’s recent appointment. If you have questions or concerns, please let us know. We also take compliments and criticism seriously to improve! Please take our quick survey to let us know how we did.”

My Pixel took this lengthy message and squished it down into the following: “Pet Vet Family Pet Care Center following up on Minnie’s recent appointment.” SO much better.

In another example, my boss, Bogdan, sent a Slack message letting everyone know about upcoming company holidays. His original message read:

“Hi @channel December 25-26 and Jan 1-2 will be company-wide holidays, so you don’t need to request them. For other days normal rules (request in Bamboo) still apply. Thanks!”

It’s much more manageable than the vet text, but it’s still a longer message. AI Notification Summaries trimmed it down to, “Company-wide holidays December 25-26 and Jan 1-2; request in Bamboo for other days.” Short, sweet, and to the point.

One of my favorite examples was a summary of a text from my mom. She sometimes sends long texts, as is evident from this one I received on Thanksgiving:

“Good morning. Happy Thanksgiving 🦃🦃. The Biggby order is under Jennifer Gilbert. I’ll Sofi you the money now. $40.26. two boxes, cups, cream and sugar. Just be sure they remember to give you everything. Lave ye. See you both later. I’m adding $5 tip. Please include 🍁☕️”

AI Notification Summaries took all of this and distilled it to simply, “Biggby order under Jennifer Gilbert; $40.26 plus $5 tip.”

In every instance that I’ve seen Notification Summaries, they’ve worked flawlessly. Google does an excellent job of separating important information from fluff, showing only what you need, and — most importantly — ensuring its summaries are accurate. That’s much easier said than done, and the fact that I’ve not noticed AI Notification Summaries hallucinate once, even after over two months of use, is mighty impressive.

So, what’s the problem?

Unfortunately, there’s just one problem with AI Notification Summaries that’s holding the feature back from true greatness. Simply put, it doesn’t work very often.

I’ve had AI Notification Summaries enabled since mid-November, and even though we’re already coming up on February, I can probably count on both hands how many times I’ve actually seen the feature work as intended. There have been so many instances where I would have expected Notification Summaries to do its job, but instead, it works so infrequently that I often forget the feature exists.

In the first screenshot above, I had notifications for two conversations in Google Messages and one in Telegram. All of them were longer messages, with the Telegram notification including text from over half a dozen messages. All of these should have been prime candidates for AI Notification Summaries, and yet, it never happened. The second screenshot shows numerous Gmail notifications, along with a lengthy one from Asana. Notification Summaries would have been helpful for all of these, but again, it just didn’t work.

It’s the same story in the third screenshot, with notifications from Google Messages, Walmart, and two Gmail inboxes (plus countless more below). My notifications were overflowing on this day, and AI Notification Summaries could have been a godsend to clean everything up. But, once again, they just never activated.

It would be one thing if Notification Summaries occasionally didn’t work, but the problem is that it’s the opposite. I can go multiple days without seeing any AI Notification Summaries on my Pixel, and as someone who receives hundreds of notifications every single day, that’s not good.

I hope Google keeps working on Notification Summaries

As frustrating as this inconsistency is, the good news is that, when they do work, Notification Summaries are excellent — far better than any of my time using Apple’s version of this feature. It’s a better problem to have a quality product that doesn’t work frequently enough than to have a bad product that shows up too often.

At the end of the day, it is still a problem, but I’m hopeful Google can remedy it over time. AI Notification Summaries could have easily been disastrous, but after my experience over the last two months, it’s pretty apparent that they aren’t.

Notification Summaries have enormous potential, and I hope Google expands them to the point where they’re something I can rely on daily, rather than being a fun, inconsistent enigma.