• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 9, 2024

Search-based interfaces supported by AI have become the next wave in conversational engines. As more companies use Reddit data to train their LLMs, the advertising industry will see this trend increase.

Reddit offers answers, advice, and perspectives on almost anything, and AI-powered search is part of the company’s longer-term vision to improve the conversational experience on Reddit – making searches and finding information on the platform faster, smarter and more relevant. 

On Monday, Reddit rolled out the ability to search for information, get recommendations, and have discussions on any topic.

Reddit Answers -- which seems to be a modern spinoff of Ask Jeeves introduced by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in April 1997 -- is supported by AI and machine learning.

There do not seem to be any plans to link some form of advertising unit to the conversations, but this could mean that the company is missing an opportunity to connect brands.

The tool will allow redditors to ask questions and receive answers using an AI-powered conversational interface.

Once a question is asked, curated summaries of relevant conversations and details across Reddit will appear, including links to related communities and posts. 

Redditors can read the snippets and answers, add to the conversations, and go deeper in their search with their own or suggested follow-up questions.

Reddit Answers is initially rolling out to a limited number of users in the U.S. with support in English, but the company plans to expand to additional languages and locations. 

The feature should enable Reddit to compete with AI companies such as Perplexity, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini.

All have become popular search chat engines to get quick answers to questions.