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 smartphones, but promises to exercise a little more restraint than Apple. Yes, as part of the Pixel feature rollout in November 2025, the Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 phones (excluding the Pixel 9a) will receive AI-powered notification summaries.
Problem with AI notification summaries
If you’re a little taken aback after reading this, I don’t blame you. This is one of the few AI features where Apple has outdone Google. When it debuted during the iOS 18.3 beta, the reviews were quickly criticized for their lackluster coverage of complex topics like breakups and for distorting the news .
Apple quickly removed the news bulletins (though they’ve since returned ) and clarified when the AI writes the notification, but it seems Google is still a little more cautious about triggering it.
How AI notification summaries work on Pixel
Rather than attempt to organize every notification you receive, Google’s AI Summaries feature is currently rolling out to popular chat apps, including its own Messages app and alternatives like WhatsApp. Furthermore, the feature will only activate in “long chats,” offering “digestible conversation summaries.”
This means you’ll see far fewer AI notifications than on iPhone, where they’re currently used for news, entertainment, chats, email, and more. This approach is likely more secure for Google, but it means AI summaries are more designed to quickly get you back on track than to organize information (though this will change in the future).
As on iPhone, AI notifications on Pixel will appear as a small, blinking icon with several lines underneath, along with the notification itself. They will also be italicized for added visual distinction.
How to enable AI notification summary on Pixel
Google is also being cautious, making its AI-powered notifications entirely opt-in. This means you’ll need to manually enable them before you’ll see them. You can do this in Settings > Notifications > Notification Dashboards . On this page, you can also exclude specific apps from the “Don’t include these apps” list.
If you still don’t see dashboards after enabling them, make sure the “Intelligent system” feature on your Android is enabled under Settings > Notifications > Privacy > View, reply, and manage notifications . Additionally, dashboards won’t be generated if your phone is in battery saving mode or if you’re actively using it (according to Google, “the screen must be off for a while” for them to appear).
When will my Pixel get AI notification summaries?
AI notification summaries begin rolling out today, alongside the November system patch. However, they aren’t automatically included in the patch download, so it may take some time before you see them (I haven’t received them yet).
In the meantime, it’s still a good idea to update your phone. To download the November 2025 Pixel update, wait for a notification from Google or go to Settings > System > Software Updates and manually check if it’s installed on your device.
What’s next for Pixel’s AI-powered notification dashboards?
While today’s update is clearly just a trial run by Google, the company has bigger plans for December: later this year, some Pixel phones will also begin automatically disabling “low-priority notifications” and automatically sorting them into categories like “News” and “Stocks.” Hopefully, by the time these features launch, Google will have learned from Apple’s experience.