Late last year, Reddit launched its AI-powered search tool. CEO Steve Huffman said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call that the company plans to add it to Reddit’s main website search to make the feature even more prominent.
“We are now working on integrating it into the Reddit core search experience to further simplify the path from the question to the answers on Reddit,” Hoffman said. “Integration into the reddit search means we want a search box. That will be the main search box where you will type the query and you will get your query [Reddit] Answers, answers, or you know, are more of traditional reddit responses, depending on what you are searching for. ”
So far, Reddit answers are still marked as “beta”, and it has been living in its own part of service. This feature summarizes conversations from Reddit in response to queries users may add “Reddit” to search on Google. Hoffman said Redit’s answer has been used by all American Redits as well as a few international markets, with 1 million users per week. This is just a small part of Reddit’s 401 million users per week, but adding it to Reddit’s main search box should improve it.
Hoffman said the change is part of a broader strategy to improve Reddit searches. He said Reddit answers can help make it easier for new users to access the service and guide people who come to the website through search engines. This change can also be controversial – Reddit users are not known for major changes that love the service – although Huffman admits that users may not always want AI-generated summary of each search.
“Sometimes people would want to get a summary, annotated sterile answer from AI, and even we build it ourselves with Reddit’s answer,” Hoffman said. “But other times, they want the subjective, real, confusing, multiple perspectives that Reddit provides.”
