Why is my iPhone showing unread messages in iMessage when none exist?

Moving to a new iPhone, the iMessages badge count is showing unread messages even though there is no unread messages showing up in the Unread Messages Filter.

My other synchronized devices show the correct badge count. Interestingly, on macOS, you can right click on iMessages and go to Unread Messages. With iOS there is a helpful filter for Unread Messages, and this is empty.

Despite this being empty, my badge count says 3 unread messages on the iPhone.

Here’s the fix: Ask Siri to read your unread text messages. I did this, and Siri found 3 old messages from 6 months ago, read them, and this cleared the badge count! Please up vote if this fix works for you!

I usually only have issue like this when moving to a new phone or tablet, but this was a a good easy fix to allow AI to handle it.

For Apple: It’s interesting that the Badge Count doesn’t reflect the Unread Messages filter. Not saying this is a bug, but obviously the criteria for the call out is different…. Would be great to have a technical answer from Apple why this gets out of sync when moving to a new device.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]