LLMs Enhance User Profiles in Recommender Systems

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LLMs Revolutionize User Profiles in Recommender Systems
The rapid development of Large Language Models (LLMs) has opened up new possibilities for recommender systems. LLMs enable zero-shot recommendations without the need for conventional training. However, previous approaches have mainly focused on users' purchase history. The untapped potential of user-generated text data, such as reviews and product descriptions, is enormous.
A new approach called PURE (stands for still to be researched) leverages this potential. PURE is an LLM-based recommendation framework that creates and maintains evolving user profiles by systematically extracting and summarizing important information from user reviews. The framework consists of three core components:
A Review Extractor to identify user preferences and important product features. A Profile Updater to refine and update user profiles. A Recommender to generate personalized recommendations based on the most current profile.
To evaluate PURE, a continuous sequential recommendation task was introduced that reflects real-world scenarios by adding reviews over time and updating predictions incrementally. Initial results on Amazon datasets show that PURE outperforms existing LLM-based methods and effectively utilizes long-term user information while simultaneously considering token limitations.
The Advantages of LLM-based Profile Management
The integration of LLMs into the profile management of recommender systems offers several advantages. By leveraging the semantic capabilities of LLMs, nuances in the language of user reviews can be captured that remain hidden from traditional methods. This allows for a deeper understanding of user preferences and leads to more precise and relevant recommendations.
Another advantage is the ability of LLMs to handle the dynamics of user preferences. Unlike static profiles, which can quickly become outdated, LLM-based profiles can be continuously updated to reflect changes in user behavior and new interests. This ensures that recommendations remain current and relevant.
Challenges and Future Research
Despite the potential of LLM-based recommender systems, there are still challenges to overcome. The computational complexity of LLMs can hinder the scalability of these systems. Optimizing efficiency and developing new techniques to reduce computational effort are therefore important research areas.
Another aspect is the explainability of LLM-based recommendations. It is important that users understand why certain products are recommended to them. Developing methods for transparently representing the decision-making process of LLMs is therefore essential to gain user trust.
Future research could focus on the development of hybrid approaches that combine the strengths of LLMs with those of traditional recommendation methods. Integrating contextual information, such as current location or time of day, could further improve the accuracy and relevance of recommendations.
The development of LLM-based user profiles for recommender systems is a promising research area with the potential to fundamentally change the way we discover and consume products and services. Through continuous research and development, these systems can be made even more powerful and user-friendly.
Bibliographie: https://arxiv.org/html/2502.14541v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.15623 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/386334807_A_Review_of_LLM-based_Explanations_in_Recommender_Systems https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631700.3665185 https://github.com/jindongli-Ai/Next-Generation-LLM-based-Recommender-Systems-Survey https://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/tj/publications/zhou_etal_24a.pdf https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4982389 https://github.com/ghdtjr/A-LLMRec https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383491886_Large_Language_Models_meet_Collaborative_Filtering_An_Efficient_All-round_LLM-based_Recommender_System https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3640457.3688161 ```