XRec: Large Language Models for Explainable Recommendation

Qiyao Ma, Xubin Ren, Chao Huang


Abstract
Recommender systems help users navigate information overload by providing personalized recommendations aligned with their preferences. Collaborative Filtering (CF) is a widely adopted approach, but while advanced techniques like graph neural networks (GNNs) and self-supervised learning (SSL) have enhanced CF models for better user representations, they often lack the ability to provide explanations for the recommended items. Explainable recommendations aim to address this gap by offering transparency and insights into the recommendation decision-making process, enhancing users’ understanding. This work leverages the language capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to push the boundaries of explainable recommender systems. We introduce a model-agnostic framework called XRec, which enables LLMs to provide comprehensive explanations for user behaviors in recommender systems. By integrating collaborative signals and designing a lightweight collaborative adaptor, the framework empowers LLMs to understand complex patterns in user-item interactions and gain a deeper understanding of user preferences. Our extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of XRec, showcasing its ability to generate comprehensive and meaningful explanations that outperform baseline approaches in explainable recommender systems.
Anthology ID:
2024.findings-emnlp.22
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, Florida, USA
Editors:
Yaser Al-Onaizan, Mohit Bansal, Yun-Nung Chen
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
391–402
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/add-emnlp-2024-awards/2024.findings-emnlp.22/
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2024.findings-emnlp.22
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Qiyao Ma, Xubin Ren, and Chao Huang. 2024. XRec: Large Language Models for Explainable Recommendation. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2024, pages 391–402, Miami, Florida, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
XRec: Large Language Models for Explainable Recommendation (Ma et al., Findings 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/add-emnlp-2024-awards/2024.findings-emnlp.22.pdf