It's now become even easier to sift through Amazon reviews, thanks to the retailer's new feature which uses generative AI to summarise customer-generated product reviews.
The highlight feature, which has been in testing since the start of the year, picks out shared themes and the overall “customer sentiment” of reviews, before summing them up in a short paragraph on the product detail page. But what about fakes?
Amazon claims it will be using machine learning models that analyze “thousands of data points” to prevent phony reviews from appearing in summaries. But with 200 million fake reviews being blocked from the platform in 2022 alone and tools like ChatGPT making their creation easier than ever, it's unclear whether the company's efforts will be enough.
Amazon Launches New AI Review Summary Feature
As part of Amazon's recent effort to incorporate artificial intelligence into more of its products and services, the ecommerce giant has just launched an AI review summary aimed at streamlining the customer experience.
Amazon's new tool uses generative AI to create review summaries, saving customers the time and effort involved with digging through swathes of user comments manually. The feature draws from the most frequently mentioned features and customer opinions and condenses its findings into a short paragraph on the product detail page.
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According to a recent press release by Amazon, this new AI-powered feature aims to “help customers determine at a glance whether a product is right for them.”
Amazon's new product insights feature. Source: aboutamazon.com
The ecommerce platform has also released a “product insights” feature (pictured above) which lets customers filter reviews by common search categories like “Ease of use” and “Stability” to gain targeted insights about the product they're considering.
Can These AI Reviews Be Fully Trusted?
Amazon's new review summary feature gives shoppers an easy way to measure customer sentiments at a glance. But how is the company planning to combat the millions of fake reviews that exsist across the site?
According to Amazon's recent press release, the company is currently investing significant resources to proactively stop the proliferation of bogus reviews across the platform. These investments are funding “machine learning models that analyze thousands of data points to detect risk” including factors like review history and sign-in activity, as well as filtering conducted by human moderators.
“The new AI-generated review highlights use only our trusted review corpus from verified purchases,” – Vaughn Schermerhorn, director of community shopping at Amazon
Amazon began using AI to track and take down reviews in June, after AI chatbots like ChatGPT contributed to an uptick of forged reviews on the site. Amazon also cracked down on the practice throughout 2022, blocking more than 200 million fake reviews and pursuing legal action against multiple review brokers.
Clearly, the ecommerce behemoth is taking fraud detection seriously. But with an analysis from Fakespot finding that 42% of Amazon's 720 million reviews were fake in 2020, we'd still recommend taking these AI-generated reviews with a grain of salt.
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Could AI Change Customer Reviews Forever?
Amazon's new AI summary feature marks the biggest overhaul of its review process seen since they were first rolled out in 1995. But while Amazon's review summarization rollout may be the biggest to hit the ecommerce world, it's not the first.
In May, Microsoft added AI-generated app review summaries to its store, displaying top-line review synopsis' alongside its usual five-star ratings. Online retail company Newegg also launched AI-generated review summaries just last week, boasting custom lists of pros and cons based on customer feedback.
Now Amazon has made the move, it's fairly likely that these AI-powered summaries will set an industry standard. And with CEO Andy Jassy recently revealing that every Amazon business is running multiple AI initiatives, customers can expect to see a lot more AI upgrades across the site soon.
