App Store: Apple gives an insight into how AI summaries arise

At first glance, Apple’s new summary for app reviews looks like a simple task for artificial intelligence. The function introduced with iOS 18.4 is intended to provide users of the app store a faster overview of what others say about an app. On closer inspection, however, it is much more complex, since older and false reviews can reproduce a crooked picture – Apple has now shown in a blog posthow to master the challenge using various AI models.

Regular readers of app reviews know that there are often entries under the reviews of an app that pass the topic-for example, a criticism of the quality of the food of a participating restaurant or resentment against the app developer. Critical reviews for older versions with long -resistant mistakes also threaten to distort the picture.

Summary as science

Apple therefore turns into a real science of the two sentences, as is now being explained in the company’s own machine learning blog. A multi -stage system made of large Language models (LLMS) should deliver usable summaries with a length of between 100 and 300 characters.

In a first step, all reviews are sent by a filter to filter out spam, insults and fraudulent content. A specially coordinated LLM should then extract the core statements of each evaluation. In a next step, these statements are organized by another model into different topics. In the third step, the most relevant topics should then be selected. Another AI model produces the summary in the desired length and in the styles of Apple.

Blueprint for other apps?

The publication in iOS 18.4 was preceded by an examination by human testers, which the summaries would have knocked on various aspects, according to Apple. This includes that the content is not harmful or offensive and the reviews used are reproduced in truth. Further testing has been seen whether the grammar is correct and the summaries for download and purchase decisions are useful.

At Apple you can also see your own approach as a blueprint for similar applications where there are large amounts of user feedback. There are currently no summaries in the German App Store. They are gradually rolled out and are currently only available in the US store for selected apps.