Reddit tests AI-powered search results, mulls paid subreddits

Massive adjustments may very well be on the way in which for Reddit. 

The location is testing a serious injection of AI into the platform and contemplating placing sure content material behind a paywall.

Simply as Google tried (and ultimately failed) to do earlier this 12 months, Reddit is bringing AI to its search outcomes.

In an earnings name earlier this week, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman introduced plans to check AI-powered search outcomes that summarize content material for the location’s 1 billion searches each month. This follows an announcement 4 months in the past that Reddit could be utilizing AI to average communities. 

Many individuals, Huffman defined, use Reddit like a search engine, “actually typing right into a field precisely what they’re inquisitive about.” With the brand new outcomes, customers will see each the solutions they’re in search of and new communities associated to that search, hopefully serving to them dive deeper into the location.

Reddit will use a mixture of first-party and third-party merchandise to energy the characteristic, which ought to roll out later this 12 months. 

A pure query — given Reddit’s typical demographic — is: How does the corporate plan to maintain its AI from going rogue and providing up recipes for glue pizza or gasoline spaghetti — as Google was accused of doing? Mockingly, a few of the misinformation that led Google’s AI astray got here from Reddit.

Additionally throughout the name, Huffman teased placing sure content material behind a paywall. 

In response to a query about how the location might assist creators earn cash as Twitch and YouTube creators do, he mentioned the “present, altruistic, free model of Reddit will live on and develop and thrive simply the way in which it has. However now we are going to unlock the door for brand spanking new use circumstances, new sorts of subreddits that may be constructed that will have unique content material or non-public areas, issues of that nature.”

Probably the most “magical” issues concerning the web site, Huffman went on to say, is the way in which customers assist one another, give recommendation, and assist others by means of robust selections. Paid content material would not embrace the prevailing portion of Reddit, it appears, however as a substitute, it might embrace new, expanded content material.