Reddit began testing Answers, an AI-powered conversational search interface

Reddit, an internet-favorite source for practically any topic its users can think of, has shared it will start an early access trial of a new AI-powered search feature called Answers. Currently available for a small group of US-based users, Reddit Answers allows users to ask questions in plain English about anything they are looking for and then delivers responses that include summaries from relevant conversations, inline answers from fellow redditors, links to relevant conversations and communities, and suggested follow-up questions to keep the conversation going.

Reddit Answers currently only supports English, but Reddit has confirmed plans to expand the feature's availability to more users and languages. The Answers feature appears to be part of a broader push to enhance the Reddit experience using AI features, as it follows previous announcements such as AI-powered translations, and business analytics (the latter through the Reddit Pro toolkit). Answers is a natural next step for Reddit since it already holds licensing deals with Google and OpenAI to surface its content in their products or use its data for model training. Reportedly, Reddit is leveraging a combination of proprietary, OpenAI, and Google Cloud models to support these features.