Are Amazon's AI-Generated Review Summaries Part of a Larger Change in Online Shopping?

"Customer say," writes Amazon on at least some of their product pages, across from that grid showing the number of five-star and four-star reviews... But at the bottom of that summary is a disclaimer that what you read was "AI-generated from the text of customer reviews."

This has been going on for a few months now, points out the Washington Post's "Tech Friend" newsletter. And after reviewing how AI distilled nearly 40,000 reviews into a succinct summary, their impression has shifted to "hmm ... maybe this is a decent use of text-summarizing AI — as long as you learn to read Amazon's AI digests with a savvy eye..." Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, pointed out that since Amazon started the AI-generated review summaries last year, the company has tweaked them to highlight terms or features that apparently come up a lot in customer ratings. The positive features are highlighted in green and the negative or neutral feedback is in yellow and gray... If you like to get a gist of what shoppers thought of a product, Amazon's AI summary can spare you from skimming the reviews yourself...

But as with Amazon reviews in general, the AI summaries might be incomplete or untrustworthy... Bloomberg News recently looked at dozens of AI review summaries and found in some cases they underplayed customers' negative feedback and exaggerated them for other products. And, of course, if the reviews themselves are misinformed or rigged, a summary of junk customer feedback will also be junk. Amazon said the company is "seeing positive feedback on our review highlights from both customers and sellers" but that it will "continually improve the review highlights experience over time."
But is this just the beginning? Amazon, eBay and Shopify are also experimenting with using AI to spit out descriptions of products from a photo or a few keywords. Some of this AI-generated text will be better than the confusing product listings you sometimes read online. A lot of it will be worse. A bunch of technology companies, including Amazon and Meta, are also betting that AI will be better and cheaper than current methods for creating product advertisements to clog your online shopping results and social media feeds. Hooray, right?!

This could be good...

[MpVpRb]

.. if the AI was trained to spot fakes and find useful, accurate information
Sadly, it will probably be trained to increase sales

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[fluffernutter]

Has there ever been any advancement in technology that wasnt about sales?

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[rogoshen1]

Maybe Frank Herbert was on to something in Dune regarding AI.

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[CaptQuark]

Another problem is the "Review Switch" that many unscrupulous companies use. They list a popular item like a candle or bath soap to receive positive reviews, then switch the product listing to something else to trick the buyers to believe the new item received the positive ratings.

I did a quick search on Amazon for a seasonal item like a car window defroster. First item I found has exactly this review switch problem. If you check most of the 5-star reviews they describe the item as "has enough storage fo

License to lie

[karlandtanya]

How much revenue do you think Amazon can realize by selling influence to the summary? And do you seriously think they will leave that money on the table?
The summary for your product can become more...favorable...
Maybe by cherry-picking reviews or shilling or just making stuff up. That last one is an AI "hallucination"; we've all heard of those. Definitely not a deliberate lie.

Saying "AI" is an absolutely wonderful way to dodge accountability. Nobody can control exactly what the AI says; we don't "program" it; we just train it.
Amazon's lawyers will ensure they're covered. They told you this was an AI and not accountable. They told you this was just a summary. The original reviews are over here...
But very few buyers will read the original reviews, it's going to require effort. As much effort as necessary to ensure that very few buyers read them.

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[gweihir]

That will not work, at least in Europe. If they publish inaccurate summaries, they become liable, "AI" or not. The base principle is that "AI" is just a tool and the person using that tool is fully and unlimited responsible for what the outcome is. "AI" is really not special in any way legally.

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[Espectr0]

i have always called marketing license to lie, so you are not off

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[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

How much revenue do you think Amazon obtains by promoting positive reviews and shushing negative reviews by rejecting negative reviews?

I can assure you that Amazon shushes negative reviews by rejecting them for some silly reason that does not fit the context of the review.

It's an improvement over the star scheme

[Powercntrl]

A few years back I bought one of those Chinese electric tankless water heaters from Amazon because my home's water heater is in an extremely inconvenient location and the reviews looked good. As expected, it was made of Chinesium and sprung a leak after about two years of use. I left a negative review, but like that TornadoGuard XKCD comic, my 1-star rating didn't make a dent after being averaged in with all the 5 star reviews from people who just received theirs and are pleased that their cat really liked the box it came in.

The AI summary, however, has a big orange negative mark with the word "Leakage". I'd say that serves as a good caveat emptor which everyone can finally see.

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[SniffTheGlove]

I agree

Some reviews give 5 stars and the person then states "I have not used it yet". Reviews like this should be deleted by the AI as they are just useless. Just the same as reviews where the person gives 1 star and then states "The item was stolen from my porch" which again is a useless review.

Just like louis rossmann who complained about the junk electrical crimps he bought and yet these same useless crimps are still appearing at the top of the listings with many dumb folk giving out 5 star reviews just

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[Required Snark]

Not really. Now the lies and manipulation are automated and that's not any closer to a fair review.

Coming soon: manipulative bullshit tailored to you online profile!! We can push all your buttons algorithmically for fun and profit.

Re:It's an improvement over the star scheme

[serviscope_minor]

I'm honestly amazed that anyone on this site would buy things like that. When you have a fly-by-night Chinese company that's essentially immune from the laws of your jurisdiction importing stuff with safety certifications which are unlikely to be verified and unenforceable when they're false, well, you often get the quality you'd expect.

Anything dealing with mains electricity is a recipe for disaster.

Thing is 99% of them will probably be fine. But safety regulations are written in blood. There's a reason mains stuff has all sorts of onerous regulations about insulation, creepage, earthing and so on, that you just don't need 99% of the time, but saves lives the other 1%.

Amazon reviewers are never going to UL's job, or even a good youtuber's job (like Big Clive) and do a teardown and check whether there's anything really nasty.

This is not to say I've never done it. There's too much kit that's just horribly expensive otherwise (reflow oven, rework station). On the other hand I know what I'm doing. I don't leave them unattended, checked the earth bonding so I know it will short out safely, I've got a good RCD and a small fire extinguisher in the room I use them. Otherwise, I buy (at a higher price from Amazon) Chinese imports from a reputable company with a UK presence that sources cheap Chinese tools, verifies they are up to standard, and stamps their name of approval on them (e.g. RS).

I don't mean to rag on you, but be thankful you only got a leak. Much better to chuck it after some minor damage rather than a getting an electrical shock or house fire.

I was talking to a person who worked at an e-scooter company recently. He was complaining they can only make battery packs for the same price as entire import scooters. That's because theirs are up to code and they put a lot of effort into protecting the cells of their battery from shock and thermal runaway so it is never a fire hazard. An uncertified (illegal) import scooter doesn't have this, they just duct tape a bunch of cells together. That's generally fine for 6 months, maybe forever. Chances are it will at worst break an you just have a cheap battery pack replacement. But when the stars align, it catches fire. It's a small chance, well nuder 1%. But there's been a spate of house fires in the UK from those.

Learn to read reviews

[gweihir]

Reviews that just say "good", "bad" or something in between are completely worthless. You need to look for the _reasoning_ and then check that for plausibility.

Yes, I am well aware most people are incapable of doing that. Hence manipulation via AI will likely work.

Online reviews...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

...are essentially useless, even the ones apparently written by "journalists." I don't think they're trustworthy in the slightest. I don't think there's any substitute for going into a shop & trying it out for yourself. Even if you go for known brands, you still have to be careful about counterfeit goods. Physical shops are less likely to commit that kind of fraud b/c it's so much easier to get caught. I recently paid a little more for a new watch because I bought it in a shop but I'm happy to buy from

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[SniffTheGlove]

A lot of major brands are slowly disappearing from Amazon as they can't really complete with the rip-off and crap fakes because everybody mostly buys the cheapest!!

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[VeryFluffyBunny]

I think the pandemic confinements encouraged a lot of manufacturers to get more involved in selling online, thereby cutting out the retail "middle men." The vast majority of sales are still f2f so manufacturers have to tread carefully if they still want to sell stuff that way. Online sales also depend, to some degree, on brands being on sale in f2f shops so that they're perceived as legit & high value & many shoppers, like me, do still want to check stuff out before they buy. Retailers can get prett

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[nukenerd]

I don't think there's any substitute for going into a shop & trying it out for yourself.

Thanks to Amazon and Covid, I now have to go a very long way to find a shop that sells the sort of stuff I want to buy, and even then they are not likely to stock it because they subscribe to the "just-in-time" business model. That is, when I phone them up to check if they have one in stock, they say they will get it in for me but I must pay over the phone first, non-refundable. So I might as well buy it on-line.

In my nearest own, half the shops are now boarded up, and half the remainder have become co

No good

[RitchCraft]

Sorry, but that ship has sailed. It doesn't matter whom or what writes the reviews, I'll never trust them again. Nothing beats going into an actual store to inspect the actual product. Amazon has turned into a virtual flea market full of useless crap.

Re: No good

[ToasterMonkey]

Nothing beats going into an actual store to inspect the actual product.

Well... not that it's a competition, but

2. Returning it to said store after finding out it doesn't work like advertised, in practice.

3. Returns affecting the likelihood of product being pulled from shelves.

Give me some real data

[timeOday]

If you offer free returns (including shipping), and then publish the return rate for each item... that's data I could use. Much more expensive to shill that system.

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[SniffTheGlove]

Last year a friend got a 65inch TV from amazon and when opened up the box there was a scratch, albeit a very small scratch on the back. He complained to Amazon to get it returned and they just sent his a new TV to replace and did not have to return the other one as it was not worth it

As if it mattered

[Opportunist]

who fakes the reviews.

Current Reviews

[neoRUR]

The problem with the way current reviews are done is that they post reviews for that product and similar products (usually pushing up the high star reviews) So unless you go to the filters and check for this product only or a verified purchase then you can get reviews for other things. Now it will also include AI generated reviews of similar products or aggregated reviews, and I'm sure they will all be high stars. This can all get misleading very fast.

How about AI generated products?

[tlhIngan]

Ars just posted about AI generated product descriptions - because they also gave "I cannot fulfill that request" in the product title and description.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/202... [arstechnica.com]

Yea, and it's bad.

[NotAMarshallow]

Just this morning I logged on to Amazon.com to see a price for a newly released product. Friday was the first day that it was released to the public yet there were over 20 reviews from 1 to 5 stars from people. The product wasn't even available and yet Amazon had reviews for you.

Shin Consumer's Reports!

[AlexSledge]

Fantastic! Now some channels will open up to provide actual user reviews for products. Perhaps a browser extension that automatically performs a lookup of customer reviews of items for sale in the shopping portals, perhaps even aid users in submitting reviews to Amazon by intercepting them before posting them to Amazon, to include them in the Real Reviews database.

(While Amazon was the example, feel free to insert your favorite large sales channel company)

The Wikipedia equivalent of product reviews. Weed ou