Google recently announced a new feature for Chrome users in the US that provides AI-generated summaries of reviews for online storefronts. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, given how much AI-generated content exists online.
On the surface, Google’s review summarising feature seems altruistic: saving you time by collating a bunch of reviews and advising you of what’s worth spending money on sounds helpful, right?
But how can you trust an AI summary when so many online reviews are fake?
Fake AI-generated reviews of products and services are a growing problem. Companies dedicated to detecting fake reviews estimate that millions of reviews use generative AI as part of efforts to falsely boost a company’s standing.
Google’s terms and conditions strictly prohibit fake reviews, including reviews posted on the Google Store. Companies listed on Google Maps also can’t manipulate reviews by offering incentives in exchange for a positive review.
That doesn’t completely stop people from attempting to game the system, however. In a 2023 analysis, Australia’s consumer watchdog found that one in three businesses faked positive reviews or deleted negative reviews online. Further research also suggests that consumer electronics and home appliances are the product categories most affected by fake reviews.
Search “AI-generated reviews” on Google, and you’ll see the first page flooded with results from services offering to use AI to produce reviews for companies’ products and services. One such service claims to “automatically generate genuine and unbiased testimonials and reviews”.
To this I ask one question: how? How can a review generated by an AI model, programmed with the inherent biases of its dataset, provide a “genuine” and “unbiased” perspective?
Furthermore, how can anyone trust an AI-generated summary of a bunch of reviews, many of which were likely published using AI? It’s an ouroboros situation that’s purely concerned with consumerism at the expense of critical thinking.
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