Amazon reviews to be AI-driven as online retail giant introduces new-age tech to help shoppers

Amazon, the online retail giant, is making shopping even more convenient for its customers with a new feature that employs the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise product reviews. This innovation aims to help shoppers quickly grasp the key takeaways from customer reviews without having to read each review individually. The feature identifies common themes from the reviews and presents them in a concise paragraph, easily accessible on the product detail page.

A subset of US mobile buyers who are interested in a wide range of items are able to access the AI-generated evaluations, the company claimed in a blog post posted on Monday. According to Vaughn Schermerhorn, director of community shopping at Amazon, it may be extended to more users and more product categories in the upcoming months based on customer feedback.

Amazon's new AI review summary does the hard work for shoppers. It picks out the important stuff from lots of reviews, showing what customers like and don't like about a product. This helps people decide quickly and saves time.

When will the AI feature be available?

The tech giant highlighted in its blog post that the AI-powered review summarisation feature, initially tested earlier this year, is currently available to a select group of mobile shoppers in the United States. This feature covers a wide range of products, making it accessible to a broad customer base.

Amazon's Director of Community Shopping, Vaughn Schermerhorn, shared that the company plans to expand this offering to more customers and potentially include additional product categories in the coming months. The expansion will be guided by valuable feedback from the users of this new tool.

A sneak peek at the future

Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, has spoken out frequently on the need for generative AI for his company's future. He emphasised the revolutionary potential of this technology in his letter to shareholders earlier this year.

Additionally, Jassy said that other generative AI projects are in development across all areas of Amazon's company during an earnings call with investors. This includes the devices division of Amazon, which is in charge of making things like the voice-activated assistant Alexa.

A new product feature is on the way: Amazon

In addition to the AI-generated review summaries, Amazon is also introducing a product insights feature. This tool allows customers to uncover common themes in reviews. By analysing a multitude of reviews, this feature organises the collective sentiment and identifies trends associated with a product. This gives customers additional information to help them make decisions regarding their product.

As the field of generative AI gains momentum, Amazon is actively exploring ways to integrate this technology into its array of services. While some tech companies like Flipkart, Google, and others have introduced high-profile AI chatbots or imaging tools, Amazon is shaping its own path by focusing on enabling developers to create their own generative AI tools using Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure. This strategy reflects Amazon's commitment to fostering innovation and empowering developers to harness the potential of AI.