Deep language-based critiquing for recommender systems

Critiquing is a method for conversational recommendation that adapts recommendations in response to user preference feedback regarding item attributes. Historical critiquing methods were largely based on constraint- and utility-based methods for modifying recommendations w.r.t. these critiqued attributes. In this paper, we revisit the critiquing approach from the lens of deep learning based recommendation methods and language-based interaction. Concretely, we propose an end-to-end deep learning framework with two variants that extend the Neural Collaborative Filtering architecture with explanation and critiquing components. These architectures not only predict personalized keyphrases for a user and item but also embed language-based feedback in the latent space that in turn modulates subsequent critiqued recommendations. We evaluate the proposed framework on two recommendation datasets containing user reviews. Empirical results show that our modified NCF approach not only provides a strong baseline recommender and high-quality personalized item keyphrase suggestions, but that it also properly suppresses items predicted to have a critiqued keyphrase. In summary, this paper provides a first step to unify deep recommendation and language-based feedback in what we hope to be a rich space for future research in deep critiquing for conversational recommendation.