The next time you visit Yelp on your phone to check out reviews on the newest eatery, you may be greeted by an AI-generated video. Yelp is rolling out artificial intelligence videos to Yelp’s home page feed on its iOS app.
The AI videos use large language models to grab text from reviews on an establishment and turn it into an AI-voiced narration (courtesy of ElevenLabs) and captions (courtesy of Amazon Transcribe). Then Yelp uses uploaded photos from user reviews to create a slideshow-like display of what you can eat, drink or dance to.
As far as oversight of these AI videos goes, neither reviewers nor businesses appear to have any say. Companies can’t preview the AI videos before they are generated or offer input, and users can’t decline to have their reviews or photos used. That may raise some privacy red flags, but Yelp is able to use content that’s posted to their site like this, something users should keep in mind when making future reviews.
Viewers of the AI videos will have the choice to report a video as inaccurate or containing offensive content. Yelp has said that it will conduct broad audits of the videos, which will be periodically updated for establishments as more reviews and photos come in.
Speaking to The Verge, Yelp CPO Craig Saldanha said that the company wants to create as many videos as possible, although your own activity on Yelp will dictate whether you see the videos and which ones are shown. If we find any way for you to opt out of having your review content — possibly from years past — used in these videos, we’ll be sure to let you know.
When CNET reached out to Yelp to learn more, Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s Chief Product Officer had a few tips for users. «The new AI-Stitched videos offer another way for that content to be surfaced and seen by the community,» he told us. «The videos are periodically refreshed and only use content on the platform. If users prefer not to have their photos featured in upcoming AI-Stitched videos they can remove those photos from Yelp at any time. «
