Where AI review reply features are found

AI-drafted replies come from three kinds of places. The review site itself might have a drafting feature. A separate review-management product might. Or you might paste the review into a general chat assistant. Where the tool sits decides what it can see, and who can see what you type.

The platform's own reply box

Start with the basic one. On Google, you open your Business Profile, choose Read reviews, and select Reply next to the review.¹ You type your answer into a box. That's the plain, no-AI route. On Google, the reply box is where a reply is finally posted. Other review sites have their own reply forms.

Some platforms may add a drafting button to that box. Features like that change often, and nothing here says any given site has one today. If you see one, find the maker's own help page, read what it says about the feature, and note the date you read it.

What you'll notice with a built-in feature is that the review is already in front of it. You don't copy and paste anything. That's handy, but it also means you should know where the text goes. Check the platform's privacy information before you use it.

Review-management software

Some businesses collect reviews from several sites in one place. Google notes that a profile may show customer reviews from trusted, non-Google sources.¹ So a business can end up with reviews spread across sites, and a separate product that gathers them may be handy.

Such products may offer drafting too. Plans and prices change. If you're comparing, use the maker's own pages, and write down the date you checked.

Questions worth asking of any outside product:

• Does it post replies for you, or only draft them?
• Who at the company can read the reviews and drafts you put through it?
• Can you turn off any automatic posting?

The Australian privacy regulator suggests asking who will have access to personal information put into a product or produced by it.²

General chat assistants

A chat assistant is a generative AI tool you talk to in plain language. It produces new text in response to input that often takes the form of natural language prompts.³ You paste a review and type an instruction such as "write a short, polite reply".

This route gives you the most control and the least built-in help. The tool knows nothing about your business unless you say so. You'll copy the draft back to the review site yourself.

It also has the clearest privacy risk. Australia's regulator advises against putting personal or sensitive details into publicly available generative AI tools.² That advice is from Australia. Elsewhere, your own privacy regulator is the one to ask. The page on customer details and AI tools goes into this.

Side by side

Reviews aren't everywhere

Google says reviews are available only in certain countries or regions and for certain business categories.¹ If you can't see the reply option, your category or region may be the reason, and no AI tool will change that.

For what a draft is and why it needs a read before it goes out, see what an AI-drafted reply is.