As part of the iOS 18.4 software update, currently in public beta, Apple is introducing AI-powered summaries of App Store reviews. The new feature will leverage Apple Intelligence, the company’s built-in AI technology, to offer an overall summary based on the reviews others have left on the App Store.
The review summaries will be generated by large language models (LLMs) and will highlight key information into a short paragraph, Apple’s website explains. The summaries will also be refreshed weekly for apps and games that have enough reviews to generate a summary — though Apple did not say what that threshold is.
App Store users can tap and hold on the review to report any problems with the feature while app developers can alert Apple to problems via App Store Connect.
AI summaries will first be in the U.S. in English and will later roll out to all apps with a sufficient number of reviews in additional markets and languages over the course of the year. It will also be available in iPadOS 18.4.
The feature, first spotted by Macworld in the recent beta release, may encourage unscrupulous app developers to flood their ratings and review sections with fake reviews left by bots or other paid commenters who praise the app or game or make positive remarks about its features or pricing.
While this sort of thing is unfortunately already a common practice in the app industry — or really, any on any site that offers customer reviews of a product — adding AI summaries could worsen the problem. Consumers may begin to rely too heavily on the review summary itself instead of more carefully reading through all reviews, both good and bad.
The feature also tests the ability of Apple’s AI to carefully extract and parse any negative comments or concerns in the App Store reviews and highlight them for customers in these AI summaries.
