Reddit turns 20, and it’s going big on AI
- Reddit is celebrating its 20th anniversary by expanding its use of AI to enhance user experience.
- The company’s first big AI push, Reddit Answers, has been rolled out and is “going really well,” according to CTO Chris Slowe.
- Reddit Answers provides an AI-generated summary for queries, but also links users to the original content on Reddit, rather than relying on SEO-driven results.
- This approach aims to provide more accurate and trustworthy information, setting it apart from other AI search tools like Google’s AI Mode.
- By leveraging human answers and expertise, Reddit hopes to unlock useful information from its vast trove of posts and communities, making it a go-to destination for users seeking unfiltered insights.
Reddit has become known as the place to go for unfiltered answers from real, human users. But as the site celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, the company is increasingly thinking about how it can augment that human work with AI.
The initial rollout of AI tools, like Reddit Answers, is “going really well,” CTO Chris Slowe tells The Verge. At a time when Google and its AI tools are going to Reddit for human answers, Reddit is going to its own human answers to power AI features, hoping they’re the key to letting people unlock useful information from its huge trove of posts and communities.
Reddit Answers is the first big user-facing piece of the company’s AI push. Like other AI search tools, Reddit Answers will show an AI-generated summary to a query. But Reddit Answers also very prominently links to where the content came from – and as a user, you also know that the link will point you to another place on Reddit instead of some SEO-driven garbage. It also helps that the citations feel much more prominent than on tools like Google’s AI Mode – a tool that news publishers have criticized as “theft.”
“If you just want the short summary, it’s there,” Slowe says. “If you want to …
Read the full story at The Verge.