Reddit deploys AI to combat AI-generated spam as brands exploit platform for chatbot manipulation

Reddit is using LLMs to solve a problem LLMs largely created

It's easier than ever for bad actors to spew spam across the internet as powerful large language models (LLMs) become effortlessly accessible. If you've spent about ten minutes on the internet in the last few years, you will know that this means spam and bot content have gotten become an even bigger problem than they already were. Reddit says it developed tools with LLMs to cut down on spam, much of which was created with LLMs in the first place. It's a bit ironic, but in the AI era, platforms have no choice but to fight fire with fire. According to the platform, Reddit blocks 23 million spam views per day and catches about 25,000 new spam posts and comments each day. Social platforms have been building automated spam reduction tools for years, but Reddit says these updated tools are catching spam at a higher rate. "We leverage LLMs to catch the highly subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype that older systems once missed," a Reddit blog post says. The company claims it reduced users' exposure to spam by 20% from January to March compared with the prior three months. Platforms like YouTube, Meta, and Instagram allow users to post AI-generated content so long as they disclose it, and TikTok is going as far as letting users toggle how much AI-generated content they want to see. If platforms are able to detect AI-generated content faster, that also means that they have the potential to flag violative content like hate speech more quickly. But platform experts have continually reminded us that AI content moderation must be paired with human moderation to get the most effective results.

Reddit to combat AI with more AI - Engadget

The platform now uses LLMs that can identify suspicious activity. To combat the rise of AI-generated content on Reddit, the social media platform is using its own AI tools, according to a post on its website. Reddit said its automated systems resulted in blocking 23 million spam views a day, catching roughly 25,000 posts and comments per day and revoking close to two million inauthentic votes a day. Using its own AI, Reddit said users are seeing 20 percent less spam exposure from January to March 2026, as compared to the previous three months. According to Reddit, it's using LLMs to look for suspicious activity the moment an account is created, including "highly subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype." On top of that, the site previously added another layer of protection that forces "fishy automated accounts" to verify their humanity. Beyond AI slop, Reddit's new measures are also meant to strengthen its enforcement actions, specifically with "hate and violence in all English text content" on the platform, with coverage coming to more languages soon. The time between detection to enforcement is down to less than five seconds, the company wrote, which has also reduced user exposure to harmful content by more than 40 percent. It's a notable step for Reddit, which has a contentious history with AI. Last year, researchers from the University of Zurich were caught conducting experiments in r/changemyview with AI-generated comments. In an attempt to address rampant AI scraping, Reddit also adopted a new licensing protocol meant to provide compensation if AI companies wanted to web crawl its website. Despite Reddit's past with AI, it still embraced the use of the technology on its own terms, as seen with the introducing of its Reddit Answers search feature.

Reddit fights AI marketing spam with its own AI

Brands are seeding Reddit with fake, chatbot-friendly posts so that ChatGPT and Gemini repeat their marketing as genuine advice. Reddit says its own AI now catches 25,000 spammy posts a day, the newest front in the fast-growing world of generative engine optimisation. People increasingly ask ChatGPT instead of Google. So marketers now plant fake opinions on Reddit, hoping the chatbots repeat them. Reddit is fighting back with AI of its own. Reddit has a new spam problem, and a strange one. Brands seed the platform with stealth marketing, Bloomberg reports. They plant posts and comments that pose as genuine user opinion. The goal: get AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini to quote them as real advice. Why Reddit is the target OpenAI and Google both pay Reddit for its content. Chatbots lean on the site because people trust its unfiltered, human conversations. That trust makes Reddit one of the most cited sources in AI answers. It also makes it the perfect place to game. Plant the right thread, and a chatbot might recommend your product as if a real person had vouched for it. That is the heart of a fast-growing discipline called generative engine optimisation, or GEO. Think of it as the AI-era successor to search engine optimisation. Fighting AI with AI Reddit now turns the same technology on the spammers. Its improved systems caught 25,000 "spammy posts and comments" a day in the first quarter, the company said. That cut user exposure by 20 per cent year on year. Large language models now spot "the subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behaviour and artificial hype" that older tools missed. Reddit also checks new accounts for warning signs before they can post. Humans still do much of the work. Community moderators handled more than half of all removals in the second half of 2025, Reddit disclosed. A cat-and-mouse game Marketers refuse to give up. Shanzila Ahmed runs the agency ReachLLM. She said she has landed client posts in ChatGPT within a day, though Reddit later removed some of them. Her workaround captures the whole contest. "We just need to keep pushing out good new content at regular intervals," she said. Investors smell opportunity too. The GEO startup Profound topped a $1bn valuation this year. It joins a new breed of firms built to make brands visible to AI.

Reddit's AI is hunting brands that dress marketing slop up as honest opinions

Reddit is using AI to stop brands from sneaking ads into your ChatGPT answers Reddit has become one of the internet's favorite places to share opinions. You can find just about any community there, no matter how niche. But there is a new problem in the platform, and it's the brands and marketers. Brands and agencies are now planting promotional posts and comments on Reddit in the hope that tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini will later surface them as genuine recommendations. The practice is part of generative engine optimization, or GEO, an emerging marketing strategy focused on influencing chatbot answers rather than conventional Google results. Now, Reddit is fighting back with an AI of its own, just like some other platforms. Reddit's AI is hunting artificial hype Reddit states that its upgraded automated systems examine suspicious signals from the moment an account is created. Large language models then look for subtle patterns of coordinated activity, fake engagement, and manufactured hype that older spam filters could miss. The company says these systems now block 23 million spam views each day, catch roughly 25,000 new spammy posts and comments daily, and revoke nearly 2 million inauthentic votes per day. Recommended Videos Reddit also reports that user exposure to spam fell around 20% between January and March 2026 compared with the preceding three months. It attributes the growing volume of detected content to better enforcement tools rather than proof that spam itself has suddenly exploded. Bots, paid promotions and fake reviews that push product recommendations aren't something new on Reddit. But AI chatbots have simply raised the reward for getting them onto the platform. Your ChatGPT recommendation could be an ad in disguise Marketing companies have already succeeded in getting newly created Reddit posts cited by ChatGPT, sometimes within a day. Some of those posts were later removed. But these agencies are continuing to look for ways around Reddit's moderation. These companies are manufacturing conversations on Reddit and waiting for chatbots to discover them as real opinions. Reddit still relies on site administrators, volunteer moderators, and user voting alongside automated enforcement. Community moderators were responsible for more than half of the post and comment removals during the second half of 2025.

Reddit is Using AI to Solve a Problem Created Largely by... AI

The platform is automating spam filtering as well as blocking users who break the rules and deliver hate and violence Render unto Caesar things that are Caesar's! Well, looks like social news organisation Reddit has found a new meaning for this sentence with a biblical context. The company has been battling spam on its platform ever since LLMs became more powerful. Now, they have found a foolproof remedy to keep Reddit "real and safe" - the very same LLMs! We've upgraded our automated defences to catch violating behaviour before our communities ever see it. By deploying advanced AI tools, we've reduced user exposure to spam by 20%, revoked nearly 2M fake votes daily, and slashed our enforcement time on hateful or violent content from hours to under five seconds, the company said in a blog post. Of course, the irony is not lost on us Reddit users who were drowning under spam in recent times, most of it getting there due to the LLM-based AI chatbots. Maybe, that's the revenue model AI Labs are banking on. First create a problem with their chatbots and then ask for money to solve it so that everyone is happy barring the business owner who sees a chunk of her profits vanish. This is a classic case of fighting fire with fire, the only difference being that the one lighting the fire is also the provider of the fire as a solution. The platform says it is blocking more than 23 million spam views a day besides catching 25,000 new spam posts and comments each day. What's the fun having an intelligent conversation with a hallucinating chatbot? Reddit says it recognises how millions use its platform to connect in "ordinary, often meaningful ways." These connections and conversations make Reddit "the most human place on the Internet" and makes bot activity and inauthentic content a red flag for users. "To stay ahead of the curve, we're using AI to expand our capability for detecting manipulated and spammy content through new signals and faster enforcement," the blog says. Sharing its modus operandi, the company says it looks for signals from the time an account is created to stop suspicious actors. And once they post, LLMs are leveraged "to catch the high subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behaviour and artificial hype that older systems missed." In addition, fishy automated accounts now need to verify their humanity. "Our goal is simple: limit the impact of bad actors and exposure to their content. We don't wait for content to reach the community to decide if it's harmful. Our most effective work happens before a post is ever seen by a human," Reddit says. The company also shared that they've used a sophisticated approach to combat harmful content like hate, harassment, coordinated abuse or violent threats. Unlike other platforms that shrug their shoulders about regulating such harmful content, Reddit confirmed that it was their responsibility to take action in such cases. Through automating the systems in this regard across all English text on Reddit, the company has reduced the average time between detection and enforcement to under five seconds. They have also increased enforcement actions on hate and violence by over 200% while reducing exposure to potentially harmful stuff by over 40%. Maybe, there is something other social platforms can learn from this effort. The problem creator can also become the solution provider, if those at the helm have a clear commitment to fix things and not merely push it under the carpet.