Reddit Answers the question of AI search

By now we are familiar with AI developers licensing content from Reddit to train their models, but the mega-site has taken a step in the opposite direction by launching its own AI search tool, Reddit Answers.

An official blog post from the company detailed the test launch, envisioned to provide a new method to extract crucial information from Reddit’s plethora of communities.

The Reddit Answers function should produce a useful resource for users, with the conversational tool saving time to prevent searching through individual threads. 

Reddit will be aiming to better compete against the big boys in AI models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity. 

If all goes to plan, the tool will particularly eat into Google’s traffic, when users would typically start their search terms with the keyword prefix “Reddit”. Think of it as cutting out the middleman.

Last week, the company voiced plans to expand beyond its heavily US-centric user base.

Question, meet Answers.