AI-generated review summaries are coming to Apple’s app store

Apple is bringing AI-generated review summaries to the app store with iOS 18.4. As spotted by Macworld, the latest developer beta for iOS and iPadOS adds brief summaries of user reviews to some App Store listings.

The summaries are generated by large language models to “compile highlights and key information from users’ reviews into short paragraphs,” according to details on Apple’s developer site.

Based on Apple’s example, the summaries use natural language to highlight what users say about the app, starting with positive feedback and finishing with negative feedback. Apple says the summaries will be refreshed at least once a week as new reviews are added, and users will be able to tap and hold on a review to report any problems with the feature.

The summaries will initially be available in the US App Store for apps and games published in English, and only to those with enough reviews to generate a summary. They will be available in other countries and languages later this year.

Apple’s move follows Amazon’s addition of AI-generated review highlights to its e-commerce site in 2023. These short paragraphs “highlight the product features and customer sentiment frequently mentioned across written reviews” and appear above the full reviews.

In theory, review summaries should be helpful, saving you from reading through a bunch of reviews to get the “highlights.” But they also feel potentially ripe for gaming and will likely only encourage unscrupulous companies to flood review sections.

From my experience with Amazon’s summaries, I find that its focus on the positive aspects first can feel disingenuous. I review products for a living, and if something is bad, that will absolutely be the first thing I say.