Reddit introduces an AI chatbot as platforms try to keep their users locked in
Am I The AI?… After 20 years Reddit seems to have realized that improving its search engine may actually be possible. It’s testing a conversational AI chatbot called Reddit Answers that it says will provide users with summaries of threads and comments. As Google Search is dragged for getting worse, many users have begun adding “reddit” to the end of their queries for human-written answers. In fact, “Reddit” is the sixth-most-searched word on Google this year, as folks type in things like “weird mole on foot reddit.” Now Reddit wants a piece of that traffic for itself.
Lurking: The chatbot is first rolling out to select US users, but Reddit plans to expand access. Reddit Answers is powered by AI models from Reddit, Google, and OpenAI.
R/evenue: Reddit this year struck licensing deals worth $200M+ with Google and OpenAI that allow the companies’ AI bots to crawl the Reddit-verse for answers.
Coming in bot… Reddit joins a growing list of attention-economy companies that’ve built chatbots to keep their users from going elsewhere for answers. As ChatGPT racked up 250M weekly users, social platforms have launched their own chatty bots. Meta said its bot has 600M monthly users (it’s been pushing folks to “ask Meta AI anything” on apps like Insta and WhatsApp). X recently made its Grok bot free for all users, and Microsoft has been sticking its Copilot tool in programs like 365. Meantime, industry leader OpenAI launched a $200/month pro version of CGPT.
Everyone’s searching for relevance… in an AI world. Whether it’s news publishers striking AI licensing deals or social platforms pushing their own bots, companies are adapting to not get left behind. They’re searching for fresh revenue streams, and bots could be an answer: Google already rolled out ads for its AI search overviews, and OpenAI’s said to be considering them for CGPT.