An approach is provided for providing recommendations based on preloaded models and for generating user profiles to personalize a user experience with a device or service. A recommendation model platform processes at least one latent user model, at least one latent item model, or a combination thereof associated with a device to determine one or more user preference scores with respect to one or more items. The recommendation platform also processes the one or more user preference scores against one or more thresholds values to determine explicit preference information associated with the one or more items. The recommendation platform also generates at least one user profile associated with the device, a user of the device, or a combination thereof based, at least in part, on the explicit preference information.