As more AI companies devour Reddit data to power their own chatbots, the popular online forum has begun testing a novel conversational AI feature of its own. As the company announced on Monday, a feature called Reddit Answers allows visitors to ask questions and receive curated summaries of relevant answers and threads on the platform.
This feature allows Reddit to better compete with AI providers such as ChatGPT and OpenAI’s Perplexity, which have become popular destinations for users looking to get quick and concise answers to questions. It could also aid Reddit more directly challenge Google, where so many users add the keyword “reddit” to their search queries that Google eventually integrated the feature into its search engine.
Reddit Answers is introducing a conversation feature to its platform, designed to aid people find exactly what they’re looking for right on Reddit, without having to navigate through various individual threads and communities.
When you ask a question via Reddit Answers, you’ll receive concise and conversational replies that pull information from the community and posts related to your query. You can read relevant excerpts and answers directly from real users of the platform, open full conversations and deepen your search using your own or suggested follow-up questions.
For example, if you ask, “What are some tips for getting better sleep,” the feature will display a curated summary of information provided by other Reddit users in a concise and bulleted format, similar to the answers provided by AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you scroll down, the tool will reference all the threads it pulled information from so you can go in and explore those conversations yourself.
In a blog post, Reddit says the novel feature gives users a novel way to get the “information, recommendations, discussions, and hot takes” they’re looking for from “real conversations and communities across Reddit.”
Because companies like it Google and OpenAI already display information from Reddit users’ posts in their AI features thanks to a partnership with the platform, it makes sense for Reddit to have an internal conversation tool to aid users find quick answers.
“People know that Reddit has answers, advice and perspectives on almost everything they are looking for, and AI-powered search is part of our long-term vision to improve the search experience on Reddit – making it faster, smarter and more relevant,” she said company in a blog post.
Reddit Answers is available to a narrow number of users in the US and is currently only available in English. The company plans to make this feature available in more countries in the future and add support for additional languages.
Reddit told TechCrunch in an email that the feature is based on technology created by Reddit, noting that the platform has its own artificial intelligence models but also integrates models from OpenAI and Google Cloud.
The AI-powered conversation tool isn’t the only way Reddit is integrating AI into its platform. Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman teased the introduction of AI-powered search results pages earlier this year. It also uses AI to aid translation and provides brands with AI-powered insights.