Shopping on Amazon? Then read this

Amazon announced a few days ago that it will try to help customers better understand other customers' product reviews by introducing generative artificial intelligence. The main goal of the new functionality is to save "trouble" when reading more ten individual assessments. The retail giant will use the new technology to write short texts directly on the product page. In these texts, the emphasis will be on product features and customer opinions. This text will make it easier to understand the common themes in the reviews, Amazon emphasized.

In addition to the text summary, Amazon will use artificial intelligence to highlight key product features in the form of clickable buttons. For example, if the customer would like to know more about the “ease of use” or “performance” of the product, can click a button to see only those reviews that mention those terms.

Amazon previously offered similar functionality by highlighting frequently used words in reviews, which were also available as buttons.

The new AI-powered functionality will first be available to a group of US mobile shoppers for a "broad selection" of products, Amazon said. During these tests, the company will work on learning and adapting its AI models to improve their performance. At the same time, they strive to gradually expand this functionality to other categories as well, when this option will be available to a wider group of customers.

Of course, summaries created by artificial intelligence will only be as good as the quality data they include. For years, Amazon has struggled with fake and misleading product reviews, including paid reviews.

In 2021, the company admitted that it had already blocked 200 million fake reviews in the previous year. They've also been trying to suppress the source of the fake reviews for years through lawsuits and other actions, including lawsuits against the sellers who bought the fake reviews. Last year, Amazon filed a lawsuit against the administrators of 10,000 Facebook groups that were involved in the trade of fake reviews.

Recently, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) also got involved, forcing a nutritional supplement manufacturer to pay $600,000 in a case of abusive Amazon reviews - a case where products are combined into one listing to boost one's ratings. product with good reviews of another.

With the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence, fake reviews can now become even more difficult to detect as the technology evolves to sound more human, which could lead to another explosion of fake reviews. This would mean that Amazon's AI-generated review summaries will be less useful unless the company finds other ways to prevent fake AI reviews.

Amazon today addresses concerns about fake reviews and says it will only summarize reviews that come from verified purchases. In addition, they continue to "invest heavily in resources" to proactively prevent fake reviews.