Reddit threads can be incredibly long, and sometimes it's hard to figure out what they're actually about, regardless of the title. Even keyword searching can be hit or miss. The platform wants to help solve that problem, and later this year it plans to launch a new AI-powered feature that will generate summaries at the top of search results.
The idea is simple: AI powered by large language models is good at condensing and summarizing large chunks of text, like the ones that fill Reddit threads. By making these summaries part of Reddit’s search system, users can more quickly find the content they’re looking for at the moment. There are millions of posts and comments added to Reddit every day, and sifting through them to find the content you’re actually interested in would be much easier with an AI assistant that could boil it all down to concise explanations.
“Reddit’s content is exceptionally valuable and is becoming increasingly important in the context of internet search. Today, users perform over 1 billion search queries per month on Reddit, and our work with products is improving the search experience and success rate on the platform,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman explained during the conference. “Later this year, we will begin testing new AI-powered search results pages to summarize and recommend content, helping users dig deeper into product shows, games, and discover new communities on Reddit.”
Reddit's artificial intelligence
Huffman said the AI-powered summaries will use first-party and third-party models to produce accurate and relevant summaries. The third-party element is notable since Reddit recently closed off access to its data to companies that haven’t made specific agreements with the company to do so. Right now, it’s basically just Google and OpenAI. Reddit also has a separate agreement with OpenAI that allows it to use OpenAI’s LLMs for AI-powered features.
This isn’t Reddit’s only experiment with AI on the site. The call also discussed the success of Reddit’s AI language translation feature. The translator allows users to interact with content in languages they may not speak, including German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Huffman partially credited the translator with turning France into one of Reddit’s fastest-growing user bases.
Offering AI-generated summaries arguably represents an even bigger opportunity for new Reddit users than the translation service did. Seeing a summary at the top of a page helps people understand what’s being discussed much more quickly than diving into the entire thread — especially if it’s large enough to discourage casual users from even starting. Easier navigation and absorption could make Reddit a much friendlier place for those who don’t have a lot of time. Of course, that’s only true if the AI summaries are good enough to avoid some of the problems that led Google to reduce its AI summaries in search answers.
