The world’s largest forum Reddit is launching a new AI-powered search tool called Reddit Answers to make it easier to find information on the platform.
The world’s largest forum Reddit is launching a new AI-powered search tool called Reddit Answers to make it easier to find information on the platform.
The tool, like other AI search products, responds to queries and generates well-formatted answers and links to their sources. The difference between Reddit Answers is that it gets information directly from Reddit, that is, from the original source, and does not rely on Google searches.
For example, if a user asks Reddit Answers how to modify a certain BMW model, the AI tool will answer them with a bulleted list of tips, summaries, and quotes from Reddit posts related to that question. Users can click on links in replies and go directly to the corresponding Reddit post.
«Reddit gave me access to a test version of Reddit Answers, and while I didn’t get to play with it much, I liked what I saw. There’s a big box to ask, but the Reddit Answers home page also has a bunch of suggested searches you can click on, like «favorite Nintendo character of all time,» «best detective novels of 2025,» and «first flight tips a child», — said the columnist of The Verge.
According to him, despite the company’s statement that Reddit Answers responds quickly to content updates on the platform and can provide information about the latest events within minutes, the tool could not correctly answer questions about yesterday’s football match. However, this may be an imperfection of an early version of the product.
«Reddit Answers was much more useful as a starting point to delve into a more general topic on Reddit than as a topical search tool. And while Reddit Answers is useful, I’m not sure it’s good enough yet to change my habits of using Google to search Reddit,» the journalist noted.
Reddit has been around since 2005 and is known as an open platform for communities. In 2019, the company grew to more than 400 million monthly audiences. In 2023, it had more than 50 million visitors every day, more than 40% of the audience is in the USA.
This makes the platform a valuable source of knowledge, with many users of Google and other search engines adding the word «reddit» to their queries to get results directly from its forums. In early 2024, Reddit struck a deal with Google, making its content available for training the search giant’s artificial intelligence models. The deal is valued at about $60 million per year.
But Reddit probably also wants users to search directly on its platform, and Reddit Answers is a tool to achieve that goal. The company has been testing Reddit Answers for six months, and the feature is part of Reddit’s plans to improve the search experience on the platform, Reddit VP of Product Serkan Piantino said.
According to him, Reddit Answers is built on top of the company’s existing search architecture and artificial intelligence models from OpenAI and Google Cloud. It is currently available to a «limited number of users» in the US and in English. The company plans to make it available in more languages and locations «in the future.»
We will remind that in October, Reddit reported the first profit in its history. Over the course of a year, the platform grew the number of daily users by almost 50% — Reddit believes that this happened thanks to the implementation of AI.
