Ecommerce brand debuts AI-generated product review summaries

Newegg, an American online retailer, now summarizes customer reviews using ChatGPT, the company announced.

The AI-generated summaries of customer reviews – called Review Bytes – appear on product pages, highlighting pros and cons.

Why we care. This is innovative and smart use of AI in ecommerce that could potentially drive more sales for the company. The highlighting of pros and cons is also a smart play in the era of Google reviews update. I expect more ecommerce brands to provide similar experiences soon because doing good and helpful things for shoppers also tends to be good for SEO.

Review Bytes. The Review Bytes are designed to help shoppers “understand key aspects without having to read reviews” of products. Clicking on a Review Byte generates a Search Keyword that highlights any full reviews mentioning that particular pro or con.

SummaryAI. Below the Review Bytes Pros and Cons is a section called SummaryAI. Newegg calls this AI-generated summary “a comprehensive paragraph summary” that “provides further insights into multiple customers’ opinions with sentences to elaborate on key points.”

What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot showing the Review Bytes for a pair of Sony headphones:

Among the Review Bytes are “Exceptional sound”, “Good Battery Life” and “Amazing Active Noise Canceling”.

And here’s a screenshot showing the Pros and Cons and SummaryAI section for that same product:

The AI summary is:

• “The Sony WH-1000XM4 wireless headphones have exceptional sound quality and good battery life. The active noise canceling is amazing, although it can be disorienting for some users. The headphones are comfortable to wear for long periods of time and have convenient touch controls. They can connect to 2 devices simultaneously, making them perfect for work. However, there are some disadvantages, including noise cancellation and mic support issues, charging problems, and high price. Overall, these headphones are highly recommended for their sound quality and features, but users should be aware of the potential drawbacks.”

When Review Bytes will appear. Shoppers will only see these features on Newegg’s desktop website when products hit a minimum number of reviews. Newegg declined to reveal what that minimum is, adding that number may change based on customer use and feedback.

Ahead of Amazon. Amazon was testing AI-generated summaries or product reviews, as we reported in June. However, Amazon’s AI feature hasn’t launched.