Earlier this year, Reddit cracked down on AI companies and some major search engines, saying that companies would not be allowed to crawl its site unless they signed license agreements with the company. Now, the “home page of the internet” is introducing its own artificial intelligence search function.
The feature, called Reddit Answers, provides summaries of conversations and posts from across the site in a “conversational interface.” The goal is to allow Reddit to directly provide relevant results to queries that people might find using a Google search, where it is becoming increasingly common to add “Reddit” to queries.
Although it sounds a lot like a Reddit-based search engine, VP of Product Serkan Piantino says that Reddit Answers doesn’t necessarily try to find a single answer, as you might expect from a Google search. Instead, the tools show several main points taken directly from relevant threads on Reddit. Links to these discussions are provided directly in the interface, as well as to relevant subreddits where users can delve into similar topics. “What’s important is that this feature directs you to the content itself, rather than trying to present the answer on its own,” Piantino tells Engadget.
Reddit gave me early access to the feature, and the current version looks a bit like Instagram’s Meta AI search suggestions, with a few dozen suggested queries and accompanying emojis. The answers, however, are detailed and contain direct links to highly voted comments from various sub-editors where editors have previously spoken about similar topics. This is helpful because some results may not make sense without the broader context of the topic (as in the screenshot of the answer referencing the Price Harry image).
I’ve also noticed that many of Reddit’s built-in suggestions focus on product questions, such as “best robot vacuum cleaner” or “best vitamin C serum.” While this isn’t necessarily surprising – many people already turn to Reddit forums for buying advice – it also raises questions about whether the company could potentially monetize the new search feature. “It’s something we’ve thought about at a high level, but we don’t have any immediate plans for monetization,” Piantino replied when I asked him about it.
For now, he said, the feature is still in beta and will be rolled out slowly. Reddit Answers is currently available to a “limited number” of users in the US on web and iOS, with a wider rollout expected sometime next year.
