Reddit has a new AI tool called Reddit Answers, which is built and trained on user posts to give answers made by redditors, the social media and content sharing platform said in a press release on Monday.
"People know that Reddit has answers, advice, and perspectives on almost anything they're looking for, and AI-powered search is part of our longer-term vision to improve the search experience on Reddit -- making it faster, smarter, and more relevant," the company said in the press release.
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Reddit Answers won't only help in answering question with expertise from its users, it'll also help search the site bypassing the need to Google questions with the word "Reddit" stamped on the end. Reddit Answers is rolling out to a limited number of users in the US with support for English. The initial rollout is available for users on web and iOS, with an Android version currently in the works, according to The Verge.
Reddit didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reddit Answers is the latest push by the sixth most trafficked website in the world to control how its content and data is used. As AI engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot have been popping up, news sites, including Reddit, have begun blocking crawlers from sucking up their content to train and feed AI. Reddit does allow certain players to use its content for AI and search results, as long as they're willing to pay. Reddit even went so far as to block search engines from pulling up its content earlier this year.
Back in July, Google made a deal with Reddit, reportedly worth up to $60 million, to use content from the site to train its AI. Google's agreements with Reddit not only allow the search engine to elevate better results from Reddit in Search, the social media site also was given access to Google's AI models.
Even though Reddit has been around since 2005 and brings in over 100 million daily users, it only became profitable earlier this year. Given that it took 19 years for the site to reach profitability, it makes sense that Reddit would want to tighten controls over how its data is used rather than allowing outside firms to capitalize off its user-generated content and profit from that content.