Amazon is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help customers make informed decisions when shopping on their platform. The e-commerce giant has started testing a new feature in its shopping app that generates AI-generated summaries of customer reviews on selected products. The summaries provide a concise overview of the product, including what customers liked and disliked about it, and a disclaimer that the summary is generated by AI from customer reviews.
For instance, the mobile listing for a children’s “Magic Mixies” cauldron toy states that buyers had positive feedback about its “fun factor, appearance, value, performance, quality, charging, and leakage.” However, the summary also mentions that “the majority of customers have expressed negative opinions on these aspects.” It goes on to provide examples, such as some customers paying over $100 for an unworthy toy, while others experiencing issues with the toy’s quality and charging.
The feature was first discovered by the technology chief of Amazon marketing agency Fortress Brand, Mark Wieczorek. Amazon confirmed that it’s testing the feature but did not share specific details about how it works or what AI models are being used to generate text summaries. An Amazon spokesperson, Lindsay Shanahan, said in a statement that the company is “significantly investing in generative AI across all of our businesses.”
AI as a Tool to Improve Customer Experience
Amazon has been using AI and machine learning for years to provide personalized recommendations and targeted ads to customers. However, the increasing popularity of generative AI and chatbots has pushed Amazon and other companies to focus more on this technology. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said earlier this year that generative AI and large language models have the potential to “transform and improve virtually every customer experience.”
Using AI to summarize customer reviews could be a valuable tool for shoppers, particularly as Amazon has millions of products listed on its platform, with thousands of reviews for each item. The company has already made efforts to simplify the review process for customers with its one-tap ratings system that allows users to provide feedback without having to write a full review. Additionally, some customers have started using chatbots to write Amazon reviews for them.
Trust has been a long-standing issue on Amazon, with fake reviews being a common problem on the platform. To combat this, many companies have used a combination of human moderators and automated tools to identify and remove fake reviews. The use of AI-generated summaries could help customers make more informed decisions and provide an additional layer of trust and transparency to the review system.
Amazon’s use of AI to summarize customer reviews is a promising development that could have significant benefits for both customers and the company. By providing concise and informative summaries, Amazon can help shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions while building trust and transparency in its review system.
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