As more AI companies gobble up Reddit’s data to fuel their own chatbots, the popular online forum site has begun testing a new conversational AI feature of its own. The feature, called Reddit Answers, allows visitors to ask questions and receive curated summaries of relevant responses and threads across the platform, the company announced on Monday.
The feature allows Reddit to better compete against AI providers like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity, which have become popular destinations for users looking to get quick and concise answers to questions. And it could help Reddit challenge Google more directly, where so many users add the keyword “reddit” to their search queries that Google ended up integrating that functionality into its search engine.
Reddit Answers introduces a conversational experience on its platform designed to help people find exactly what they’re looking for directly on Reddit without having to peruse through different individual threads and communities.
Once you ask a question through Reddit Answers, you will receive concise and conversational answers that pull information from communities and posts that are related to your inquiry. You can read relevant snippets and answers inline from real users on the platform, open up full conversations, and deepen your search using either your own or suggested follow-up questions.
For example, if you ask: “What are some tips for better sleep,” the feature will give you a curated summary of information provided by other Reddit users in a concise and bulleted format that’s similar to responses provided by AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you scroll down, the tool will reference all of the different threads that it pulled information from to allow you to go in and explore those conversations on your own.
In a blog post, Reddit says the new feature gives users a new way to get “the information, recommendations, discussions, and hot takes” they are looking for from “real conversations and communities across all of Reddit.”
Since companies like Google and OpenAI already surface information from Reddit users’ posts in their AI features thanks to partnerships with the platform, it makes sense for Reddit to have an in-house conversational tool to help users find quick answers.
“People know that Reddit has answers, advice, and perspectives on just about whatever 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 blog post.
Reddit Answers is rolling out to a limited number of users in the U.S. and is currently only accessible in English. The company plans to bring the feature to more countries in the future and add support for additional languages.
Reddit told TechCrunch in an email that the feature is powered by Reddit-built tech, noting that the platform has its own AI models, but also integrates models from OpenAI and Google Cloud.
An AI conversational tool isn’t the only way Reddit is integrating AI on its platform. Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman teased the launch of AI-powered search result pages earlier this year. It’s also using AI to power translation and offer AI-powered insights for brands.