Amazon is Testing AI-Generated Review Summaries

Amazon has started using AI to summarize customer reviews and help shoppers make the right choice. On some product pages. Mark Wieczorek, the CTO of an Amazon marketing agency first spotted the new AI-generated review summaries on the site (via CNBC), and Amazon has since confirmed the experiment.

“We are significantly investing in generative AI across all of our businesses,” Amazon spokesperson Lindsay Shanahan said in a statement to CNBC. For now, it appears that the AI-generated review summaries only appear on mobile, and you can see an example below with a review summary for an air purifier pointing out both its qualities and shortcomings.

“This air purifier has received positive feedback from customers in various aspects. Many customers have praised its ability to clear the air and improve air quality, with some even calling it the best air purifying device,” the summary reads. “However, some customers have expressed mixed opinions on its effectiveness in reducing allergies and asthma,” the text continues.

As one of the leading online retailers, Amazon has been dealing with a fake reviews problem for years. Today, the company detailed new efforts to fight the “fake review broker” industry that include investing in new tools to detect fake reviews and taking legal actions against bad actors.

While it’s too early to say if shoppers can really trust AI-powered review summaries, Amazon isn’t the only company to be experimenting with this. At its Build developer conference last month, Microsoft announced that the Microsoft Store will also soon be able to summarize customer reviews for Windows apps.