Seek - and WHAT will you find?

 

Something has flickered at the edge of my attention for the last few weeks when I’ve been on Amazon. Up to today, my brain had noted “oh, there’s what looks like an AI summary of reviews” and I hadn’t bothered to read further.

But today I had a look. The feature is headed “customers say” and is “AI-generated from the text of customer reviews.” I started with a music stand I’d bought a couple of years back for £14.99. Here’s what the AI rehashed from thousands of reviews:

Customers say

Customers appreciate the value, ease of folding, and ease of assembly of the product. They mention it works well, is easy to put up, and adjust for all heights. Customers also like its lightweight design. However, some customers have mixed opinions on its sturdiness.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

My pernickety side would probably take issue with some of this, but it’s useful enough for a relatively low-price, functional purchase.

But how would the AI fare with something more literary? Amazon did start out in books after all, whatever their plans for world domination.

I took a book I read last year which, to fit the topic, features a robot as the main protagonist: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro:

Customers say

Customers find the prose wonderful, flawless, and incredibly readable. They also find the story interesting and engaging. Opinions are mixed on the character development, with some finding them well-drawn and unforgettable, while others say they're thin and not satisfactorily described. Reviews are mixed also on the boring plot. Occupants have mixed feelings about the emotional content, with those who find it sad and heartbreaking, while those who say it's unconvincing.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews 

Who are those “occupants”? Something to do with inter-planetary craft? This bland and badly-composed summary would hardly help me in deciding this was a book I’d love - or hate.

For contrast, my review of the novel is here. I even get an IKEA reference in!

Now, I know Amazon will be working to iron out bugs, and I may well eat my words when I look back in a couple of years to re-read this. But, to me, it’s yet more evidence of the tendency to lump ratings and reviews together, to go for the lowest common denominator, to smoothify and blandify everything, to dock the long tail and snip off all that’s individual, quirky, odd-but-fascinating, the bits that don’t fit ...

And this is what’s happening in the area of Search. I listened in to a Gartner seminar yesterday on the Future of Search. After some initial and well-publicised hiccoughs, Google now provide AI overviews, (along with a resource carousel of links) to typical search queries. The feature is available in the US and some other markets. The example shown by Gartner was a simple “electric vs gas dryer”:

   

Helpful enough, I guess - and Gartner gave plenty of marketing tips to make sure your brand ends up in the overview or the carousel. 

The functional advantages of electric and gas dryers are one thing, though. Whether to read Klara and the Sun or Brave New World next is quite another - as is any question or decision that involves human intellect, taste, culture, emotion, past experience, hopes, dreams and anything else full of nuance and impossible to measure. 

I’m all for AI providing information that could be helpful when choosing what to buy.  I look forward to Google (and others) rolling out this kind of overview as an option. But, in the race to be first, I hope they don’t cut down the inspire and discover side of search in favour of definitive answers. 

Cory Doctorow’s vision of the AI Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, and the metaphor of feeding cows a slurry made from the diseased brains of other cows is grim, but not entirely implausible.