Artificial intelligence (AI) has invaded Amazon product reviews. How can that be so, since real human customers leave the reviews? Someone spotted a new section on some product pages that provides an AI-generated summary of the item’s reviews with a label underneath that states: “AI-generated from the text of customer reviews.”
Marketplace Pulse first reported the news after seeing a post from Mark Wieczorek, the Chief Technology Officer at Fortress Brand, on LinkedIn.
We asked Amazon PR if they could confirm the report and asked if it was a test; when it was expected to roll out; and the benefit to Amazon, shoppers, and sellers.
Amazon spokesperson Lindsay Shanahan didn’t answer the questions directly but provided the following statement: “We are significantly investing in generative AI across all of our businesses.”
That may be either reassuring or terrifying to merchants.
We didn’t get an answer to our question of whether AI-generated summaries would include or exclude poor reviews. But that question was answered with a resounding yes by Annie Palmer’s report in CNBC:
“A mobile listing for a children’s “Magic Mixies” cauldron toy says that buyers gave positive feedback around its “fun factor, appearance, value, performance, quality, charging, and leakage.”
““However, the majority of customers have expressed negative opinions on these aspects,” the summary states. “For example, some customers have paid over $100 for a toy that wasn’t worth it, while others have experienced issues with the product’s quality and charging.””
Note that from what we could see when we clicked through to the product page cited by Palmer, 85% of the reviews were 4- or 5-star reviews, with a 4.4 average rating – yet the summary stated “the majority” of customers expressed negative opinions. That seeming disconnect could be disastrous for merchants.
Amazon pioneered online product reviews, and so important have they become that the Federal Trade Commission has even cracked down on manipulation.
If anything, the new review-summary section on product pages makes reviews on Amazon even more important – and could make them even more prone to manipulation from rivals trying to get a leg up by denigrating competitors’ products.
