As part of the iOS 18.4 software update, which is now in its public beta, Apple is introducing an AI-powered summary from the APT Store review. The new feature leverages the company's built-in AI technology, Apple Intelligence, to provide an overall summary based on reviews others have left on the App Store.
A review summary is generated by a large-scale language model (LLMS) and highlights important information in short paragraphs, explains Apple's website. Also, the summary is updated weekly for apps and games with enough reviews to generate a summary, but Apple didn't say that threshold.
App Store users can tap and hold reviews to report feature issues, and App Developers can alert Apple to the issue via App Store Connect.
The AI summary is first done in the US in English and later deployed to all apps, with sufficient reviews in additional markets and languages throughout the year. It is also available on iPados 18.4.
First discovered by Macworld in a recent beta release, this feature may flood ratings with fake reviews left by bots and other paid commenters who praise apps and games, or make positive comments about their features and pricing, or encourage them to review the review section.
This kind of thing is unfortunately already a common practice in the app industry, but in reality, adding an AI summary can make the issue worse on sites that provide customer reviews of products. Consumers may begin to rely heavily on the review summary itself, both on the good and the bad.
This feature tests the ability of Apple's AI to carefully extract and analyze negative comments and concerns in App Store reviews, highlighting its customers of these AI summaries.
Apple is not the only tech giant to turn to AI to analyze reviews. Amazon introduced an AI overview of product reviews on its platform in 2023. Google's Gemini AI can also be used to outline product reviews, as explained by one developer tutorial. The company also added a review summary with AI-powered to Google Maps last year.
The AI summary is now available for beta testers for the latest releases (iOS 18.4, Beta 2 and iPads 18.4, Beta 2), but this feature will be made public when new software is rolled out to everyone in April.
Other expected features include an extended set of supported Apple Intelligence languages, access to Apple Intelligence for EU users, access to visual intelligence on the iPhone 15 Pro, new Control Center options for SIRI, ability to pause app downloads, and AI-powered features that prioritize notifications that are more important than others.