Reddit is turning user conversations into AI-powered product reviews

Résumé détaillé

Reddit's new AI-powered reviews summarize what users like and dislike about 10,000 products, helping shoppers research purchases ahead of the holidays.

Shortly after announcing a plan to transition its site to a logged-in experience, Reddit is debuting a feature that could help make it more of a destination for people doing product research via the web. The company on Tuesday introduced “Reddit Reviews,” a feature that organizes conversations about products into dedicated reviews that include the highlights and key takeaways from users across its communities.

The company notes that the new experience builds on one of the ways people are already using Reddit: to learn from others what products are really like, and how they fit into their everyday lives. These first-hand accounts and recommendations can help consumers determine whether or not a particular product is right for them.

However, given the rise of generative AI and bots, it’s an area that’s also ripe for “astroturfing” — a term that refers to when a brand fakes public support. With Reddit now effectively turning what was casual online research into more of a structured product, it could become a larger target for these types of fake reviews and recommendations than before.

To address this, Reddit’s announcement points to its rules and its latest measures to combat automated abuse and spam, as well as its practice involving community moderators, as tools it will use to keep the reviews on the site legit.

The Reddit Reviews feature itself taps into AI to organize the conversations people are having where they describe their product experiences. These posts will often see users discussing how a product works for them, or why it fails, or what the trade-offs are that someone should consider before buying.

The company has been testing the product reviews feature since February, initially with U.S. users in areas like Electronics, Video Games, and Health & Beauty products. In September, Reddit expanded the test to include the Home & Garden and Fashion & Apparel categories as well.

Now, the company says Reddit Reviews is rolling out to all U.S.

To use the feature…

Début de l'article, extrait de TechCrunch. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.