Analyst firm Gartner has changed its stance on reviewers using Generative AI for Peer Insights – provided you do it their way.

The controlled use of Gen AI starts with suggestions for a review headline – something many reviewers struggle with. An AI-based spellchecker also offers assistance.

With the service in beta, Gartner says it already helped users correct 180,000 typos. That’s a good thing, for sure – but Gartner must guard against a proliferation of blander, AI-generated headlines.

According to GPI’s latest methodology update, the number of reviews is still growing steadily. One driver for adding almost 50,000 reviews in six months has been the continual expansion to cover new categories: GPI now spans almost 700 markets.

The GPI team says these new markets “cover areas not yet picked up by Gartner experts” – in many cases, these are areas Gartner analysts are unlikely to ever create a Market Guide, Magic Quadrant or Emerging Market Quadrant.

Improved review content ahoy
A raft of minor methodology enhancements will help improve the quality of reviews. We’d also like to see Gartner beef up the guidance provided to buyers when they leave a review. Today, this is based on the number of characters typed, and bland content cannot be detected.

Nevertheless, many half-hearted or simply uninspiring reviews are eliminated in the moderation stage. That’s why, at the onset of review sourcing campaigns, some vendors still experience rejection rates in the 50%-plus range and sometimes even higher.

The introduction of Buyer Insights underlines the need for vendors to concentrate on both the quantity and quality of reviews to properly benefit from them. A minimum of 20 reviews is needed to unlock any views; otherwise, the charts won’t render.

The companion page, Readership Analytics, is locked, and Gartner promises “upgraded analytics will be coming soon” – a welcome improvement since the old analytics pages were largely inaccessible to most users.

Our take
Vendors must remain diligent in advising reviewers to resist relying on machine-generated or -enhanced text in writing reviews. Anyone who goes beyond the Gartner-provided AI assistance will likely see their review rejected.

This is an abridged version of Destrier’s client advisory. If you’d like to learn more about how Destrier enables vendors to succeed with GPI, get in touch.