Nows and Forevers

I’ve spent a lot of time railing against AI over the last few months, particularly how it impacts journalism and writing. But I have to say I’ve been relying on it in one area of my life: Reading Amazon reviews.

I discovered a few months ago, as I began to shop for Christmas, that Amazon had employed AI to read all the reviews and then summarize them. I didn’t think I was going to like it, but it turned out, I did. It talked about the good points and the bad points, and gave me a comfort level on what I was about to buy.

According to a Bloomberg article, AI-summarized reviews have had, well, mixed reviews: Some a little too positive, some a little too negative.

“Making matters worse, merchants say, the summaries were deployed just as they were headed into the crucial holiday shopping season — giving them one more thing to worry about besides inflation-battered shoppers,” Bloomberg wrote.

Can’t tell for sure until the gifts themselves are deployed on Christmas. But I do remember looking at the summaries as well as the first page of reviews. And the AI did factor into my purchasing decision, along with price.

Guess we’ll see how well I did.