Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has admitted that the platform is in an “arms race” against AI bots that are flooding discussions with fake content. Ironically, this is due to Reddit’s decision to sell access to user posts for AI training.
Reddit sold posts to Google
The whole problem began last spring, when Reddit signed a $60 million deal that allowed Google to use user content to improve its AI models. To protect the deal, Reddit began blocking access to other companies, not just AI startups but also regular search engines. This gave Google the exclusive right to index Reddit content.
But the result is that Reddit has become a magnet for companies that want their products and brands to appear in the results. chatbots. The most effective way to achieve this is massive spamming discussions.
Bots flood discussions with advertising
Huffman confirmed Lesson finish dateancial Times, that companies are using AI bots to create fake discussions and comments. The goal is to flood Reddit with a content trail that generative models will take over. “If you want to be seen in search engines, you try to be popular on Reddit. And if you want to be part of big language models, it’s the same thing,” Huffman said.
Executives at several advertising agencies have confirmed that they are indeed publishing posts on Reddit so that their brands appear in AI responses chatbots.
Reddit is now looking for ways to counter this wave. Huffman says success depends on posts being “written by people and rated by people.” But he admits it’s not easy.oneThe company is also considering introducing identity verification via WorldID, i.e. eye scanning from the company OpenAI.
9to5Mac He points out that Reddit users have previously been outraged that their posts are being used to train AI, and the emerging spam is further evidence for many that Reddit is self-inflicted.
