iOS 18.4 Beta 2 Update for iPhone Brings Apple Intelligence-Powered Review Summaries to App Store

iOS 18.4 Beta 2 update was released for iPhone developers and testers on Monday. The update brings much-awaited visual intelligence features to compatible smartphones. It also includes another artificial intelligence (AI) feature that will enable users to quickly understand the overall summary of apps and games in the App Store. Dubbed Review Summaries, the feature will be part of the Apple Intelligence suite, and will be available in all devices that support the technology. Alongside, the App Store now also supports natural language search queries.

Apple Adds New AI Feature to App Store

According to the tech giant, the iOS 18.4 Beta 2 update is adding a new Apple Intelligence feature to the App Store. Review Summaries essentially compile information from individual reviews left by users on an app or a game to create a comprehensive summary. Such review summaries will enable users to quickly get an idea about the app without having to spend hours scrolling through the reviews.

The iPhone maker highlighted that the AI tool picks highlights and key information from each user review, and then uses large language models (LLMs) to generate the summary. Apple did not mention the AI models being used to power this feature. To help users understand that this is an AI-generated content, each summary will be underlined with the text “Automatically summarised from reviews.”

Review Summaries will be refreshed at least once a week, the company stated. However, these will only appear for apps and games that have enough reviews to support generating a summary. Apple did not reveal any minimum threshold of reviews the apps need to reach to enable the feature.

Notably, the AI feature is being rolled out in a phased manner, and currently it is only available in the English language for a limited number of apps and games on the App Store. It is also only available to users in the US. Apple highlighted that Review Summaries will be expanded to all apps with sufficient number of reviews over the year. The company will also add the summaries in additional languages and other storefronts.

Additionally, with this update, Apple is also adding natural language search capability to the App Store. Users will be able to search for apps and games using their description, features, or functionality, and the AI will find the relevant results. This feature is also available in English for a limited number of apps and games in the US.