Twenty years in, the internet’s “front page” is betting big on AI while trying not to lose the human touch that made it famous in the first place.
Reddit has built its legacy as the place for raw, unfiltered, human answers, the ones you don’t find in polished SEO content. But as the platform celebrates its 20th birthday this week, it’s clear that AI will play a major role in shaping the next chapter of Reddit’s story.
Also Read | Reddit’s New AI Product Helps Brands Decode and Join the Conversation
One of Reddit’s first big plays is called Reddit Answers, an AI-powered tool that summarizes what the community knows about any given topic. It’s a direct response to a world where people increasingly type their questions into AI chatbots instead of search bars.
But there’s a twist: Reddit wants its AI to be transparent about where the info comes from. Every AI-generated answer comes with prominent links straight back to the original posts and comments, not some scraped web page or generic summary.
“If you just want the short summary, it’s there,” says Reddit CTO Chris Slowe. “If you want to delve deeper, it’s an easier way to get into it.”
Ironically, Reddit now has to protect its famously human discussions from AI spam. With so much AI-generated junk floating around the web, maintaining trust is the top priority. That means Reddit’s own AI tools are being used behind the scenes, helping moderate content and detect bots posing as real people.
Monetizing the hive mind
It’s not just about building AI for users. Reddit’s trove of human knowledge is gold for training AI models, and big players know it. The platform has already struck deals to license its data to both Google and OpenAI (yes, the same companies whose bots often scrape Reddit anyway).
The company’s position is pretty clear: if you’re going to train your AI on Reddit’s millions of honest (and sometimes brutally honest) comments, you’d better pay for the privilege. “At the end of the day, we aren’t a charity,” Slowe says. “Don’t build your business on our back and expect us not to defend ourselves.”
Staying Reddit, not Facebook
All this comes as the platform faces more competition, including a nostalgic comeback attempt from Digg (yes, really — with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian in the mix). But Slowe says the mission hasn’t changed: keep Reddit feeling like Reddit. That means pseudonymous usernames, text-first threads, and a vibe that reputation matters more than real-world identity.
“The underlying model for Reddit hasn’t really drastically changed since the early days,” says Slowe. “It’s a drastic difference with the rest of social media.”
As AI reshapes how people search, share, and find communities, Reddit’s next move is one to watch. Will it stay the go-to spot for human perspective, or get drowned out by the very AI summaries it’s helping train?
If there’s one thing Reddit knows after 20 years, it’s that the real power of a platform is still its people. AI might help you find the good stuff faster but the upvotes, the snark, the hot takes? That’s staying human.