The Google Play Store has evolved significantly over the past couple of years, with AI being a key area of focus. We learned about a Q&A feature earlier this year that would let users chat with Gemini for more details about an app. Similarly, a leak in August 2024 uncovered an AI-powered summaries feature for app reviews. It’s been a while since then, and it looks like Google is finally ready to flip the switch.
According to Android Authority, the Play Store is currently rolling out this AI summaries feature for reviews in a limited capacity. The publication located the functionality on some of their devices running version 48.5.23-31, although I’m not seeing it on my Pixel smartphone featuring the same Play Store version. This indicates a server-side element may be involved, in which case it shouldn’t take Google long to roll it out widely.
The summary appears just below the Ratings and reviews section at the bottom of an app listing, featuring a heading that reads “Users are saying.” Here, you will find a three to four-sentence summary mentioning what users like and what they don’t, followed by a “Summarized by Google AI” note at the bottom.
These additions aren’t exactly groundbreaking to people who use apps like Amazon, which also offers a handy AI-based summary of reviews within product listings. As Android Authority notes, the App Store for iPhones also picked up this capability earlier this year.
Plus new filters to sort reviews based on specific topics
In addition to offering an AI-generated summary of the app reviews, this refresh also introduces new chips/filters to display reviews that address a specific feature or issue in the app. As the screenshots above show, an app like Google Docs would surface chips to sort reviews that mention feature availability, user interface, app stability, and several other relevant topics.
While we love the addition of chips to filter reviews based on a specific feature or aspect of the app, concerns remain about AI not accurately capturing the full scope of user issues or problems. I’ve found this to be the case with Amazon’s AI-powered review summaries on occasion.
In addition to offering AI summaries of reviews for apps and games, the Play Store has offered an “App highlights” feature since last year. Meanwhile, the Q&A feature we mentioned above has been in development for a long time, although it’s still not widely available.
Since Google is working on multiple Gemini capabilities for the Play Store, we don’t expect the company to stop with these inclusions.
