The App Store could soon offer AI-generated summaries of user app reviews

On Monday, Apple released iOS 18.1, which made Apple Intelligence available to the general public. With Apple Intelligence, it's now possible to receive summaries of emails, messages, and notifications with the help of Apple's generative AI software.

Now, it appears as though the iOS App Store is set to receive a similar feature, which will allow for AI-generated summaries of user-provided app reviews. While there are no clear indications as to what these summaries will ultimately look like, we do know quite a few details about them.

As originally spotted by 9to5mac, Apple's review summaries will likely be shown alongside app descriptions and screenshots when users view the main page of an App Store application. The information surrounding these new AI-powered summaries was reportedly found on an unlisted App Store page.

As long as an application has a sufficient amount of user reviews, Apple will generate a summary that highlights the most common customer feedback related to a particular application.

The company's new App Store review summaries will be updated every time an application receives a new review from a user. Developers will also have the ability to report a summary they deem to be inaccurate.

It's worth noting, though, that these app review summaries will only be available in select countries and regions, though it is unclear which ones. The ultimate goal of these summaries is to provide users with a clear picture of an app's reviews, so that they may more easily decide whether or not to purchase or install a particular application.

While there are currently no details as to how the summaries themselves will be created, Apple will likely employ internal variants of its existing large language models for corporate tasks such as these. The snippet shared in the report doesn't say AI-generated summaries, but given the description of the feature and per-country availability, it is likely based on AI generative technology.

An app may have a summary that highlights the most common customer feedback and sentiment in user reviews about the app. The summaries are refreshed as new reviews are added. Summaries are available in select countries and regions and for apps with enough reviews to provide a summary. They appear on the app's product page. If the summary is inaccurate or has another issue, you can report a problem.

In one of our earlier reports, we outlined how internal applications and environments used for the testing of Apple's Ajax LLM in Apple's pre-release operating systems. These test applications were used while Apple Intelligence was still in development, at the time going by the codename Project Greymatter.

Apple's App Store review summaries could arrive in the near future, as references to the feature can already be found in the App Store API. The company has been adding more and more AI-related features with every new iOS 18 update. The iOS 18.2 developer beta recently introduced support for Image Playground and Visual Intelligence on iPhone 16.