Reddit to integrate AI-generated answers into main search
What's the story
Popular social media platform Reddit plans to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) tool, Reddit Answers, into its primary search function.
CEO Steve Huffman made the announcement during the company's first-quarter earnings call.
The move comes as part of a larger strategy to enhance the overall search experience on Reddit and make it more user-friendly for newcomers.
Integration plan
Users will get AI-generated answers or traditional responses
Huffman said that integrating Reddit Answers into the core search experience will simplify the journey from question to answer on Reddit.
"Integrating into Reddit search means we want one search box," he explained.
Users will enter their queries in this box and get either an AI-generated answer or a traditional community response, depending on what they're looking for.
Current status
AI tool's weekly usage
Currently, Reddit Answers works in its own dedicated section and remains in its "beta" phase.
The tool summarizes discussions from different parts of Reddit in response to queries that users would normally search for on Google by adding "Reddit" to their searches.
The feature, according to Huffman, was recently rolled out to all US-based Redditors and some international markets.
It already has one million weekly users, a small fraction of the platform's 400 million weekly users.
Enhancing user experience
Huffman's views on the new integration
Huffman thinks that adding Reddit Answers to the main search box will increase its usage.
He also hinted that this could make Reddit more approachable for newcomers and help those who land on the site through search engines.
However, he noted that not everyone would want an AI-generated summary for every search.
"Sometimes people will want the summarized, annotated, sterile answers from AI......but other times they want the subjective, authentic, messy, multiple viewpoints that Reddit provides," Huffman said.