With the public beta of the iOS 18.4 software update, Apple officially launched the AI-driven summary function of the App Store review. This new feature uses Apple's independently developed AI technology "Apple Intelligence" to analyze comments left by users and generate a short overall summary to help users quickly understand the evaluation status of the application. This innovative move aims to improve users' efficiency in the application selection process and reduce the time to browse a large number of comments.
According to the introduction of Apple's official website, these comment summary will be generated by large language models (LLMs), extracting key information from user feedback and integrating it into a piece of text. To keep the information timeliness, the summary is updated once a week, but Apple has not disclosed the minimum number of comments required to update. The launch of this feature marks Apple's further exploration in the field of AI technology application, especially innovation in user experience optimization.
Users can report problems with this feature by long pressing and pressing on comments, while developers can report related issues to Apple through App Store Connect. In the early days, this AI summary feature will be first provided in the United States in English and will then be promoted globally to other markets and languages, as long as the number of comments applied reaches a certain standard. At the same time, this feature will also be launched in iPadOS 18.4. This phased promotion strategy will help Apple collect user feedback in the early stage and further improve its functions.
While this new feature is designed to enhance the user experience, it may also raise some concerns. Some illegal developers may use false comments to manipulate ratings and comment sections, and use robots or paid commenters to post complimentary reviews. This phenomenon is not uncommon in the application industry and any website that provides customer reviews, and the introduction of AI summary may make consumers more reliant on these simplified information and ignore the importance of carefully reading all reviews. Therefore, Apple needs to strengthen the anti-cheating mechanism at the technical level to ensure the authenticity of the comments.
In addition, the new feature also tests whether Apple AI's ability to refine and parse negative comments can accurately display user concerns in the summary. This will help consumers better understand potential issues when choosing an app. Apple's AI technology needs to perform well in dealing with complex emotions and negative feedback in order to truly provide users with valuable reference information.
It is worth noting that Apple is not the only tech giant to adopt AI analytics reviews. Amazon has launched the AI summary feature of product reviews on its platform as early as 2023, and Google's Gemini AI can also be used to generate product review summary, and Google Maps also added this feature last year. This shows that the application of AI technology in the field of comment analysis has become an industry trend, and major technology companies are actively exploring how to improve user experience through AI.
Currently, this AI summary feature is available to testers in the latest beta versions (iOS 18.4 beta 2 and iPadOS 18.4 beta 2) and is expected to be officially launched to the public in April. As the official release approaches, users and developers are looking forward to this feature increasing. How Apple will deal with potential challenges deserves further attention.