Reddit Expands AI-Powered 'Answers' Chatbot to India and Other Countries

Reddit's AI-Powered Answers Chatbot Is Now Available to Users in India

Reddit's Answers feature picks information from Reddit posts, comments Reddit is rolling out its artificial intelligence (AI) conversational chatbot to more users. Dubbed Reddit Answers, the chatbot is now available to users in India, and it can be accessed via the Reddit website, mobile web, as well as iOS and Android apps. The discussion forum-style media platform first began testing the feature in December 2024 with select users in the US. Four months later, users in other regions are finally getting access to it. Users can ask the chatbot queries, and it finds the information from Reddit posts and presents it in a conversational manner. On Thursday, several users reported seeing a new "Answers" tab on their Reddit app. Gadgets 360 staff members were also able to access the new tab, at the bottom of the app, next to the Home button. The tabs icon looks like three water droplet-like shapes arranged in the shape of a triangle. According to details shared by the platform in December, Reddit Answers is designed to help users find information, recommendations, discussions, and opinions on the platform. The feature is still in beta, and is currently available to all users in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. The tool only supports the English language. Currently, logged-out users in these regions can ask up to 10 questions per week, while logged-in users can ask up to 20 questions per day. Additionally, Premium subscribers with access to the beta version can ask up to 100 questions every day. The Reddit Answers is a full-screen interface. The centre of the screen shows the Reddit Alien logo, followed by the name of the feature. There is a short description of the chatbot as well as suggested queries to get users started. At the bottom, users can find a text field and a send button to ask queries. Once a user asks a query, the chatbot shows the response in a conversational manner. It also shares links to relevant comments from users on the platform. The AI chatbot also directs users to the subreddits where they can learn more about the topic. Additionally, at the bottom, Reddit Answers also shows the list of posts used to generate the response. In our experience, Reddit Answers usually gets the response right as long as the question is straightforward, factual, and not too niche. It sometimes struggles with niche questions that might not have enough discussion on the platform. Users can share feedback by marking a response as helpful or not helpful. For instance, when we asked the chatbot, "Who scored in Chelsea's (football club in the English Premier League) last match?" it responded with "Chelsea's last match saw Estevao score a goal on his birthday." Notably, Estêvão Willian currently plays for Brazilian club Palmeiras, and will not be a Chelsea player till the next season. In its support page, Reddit states that the AI chatbot uses in-house technology to find, synthesise, and summarise existing posts and comments across all communities on Reddit. These responses are not vetted by the company. The platform also asks users to double-check information before relying on it. Notably, Reddit mentions that data from these conversations will be collected and used in accordance with the company's privacy policy.

Reddit Takes on ChatGPT, Grok With 'Reddit Answers'

Social media micro-blogging platform Reddit has launched 'Reddit Answers' to give the "answers, perspectives, and recommendations from all of Reddit." Reddit Answers is the new entrant in the Generative AI sector, competing with rivals like ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, Grok and Gemini. However, similar to X's Grok, Reddit is largely trained on its own data. Reddit Answers is in beta version since its launch in December 2024 for selected users and is currently available in nine countries, including India. Currently, it supports only English and 20 questions and 100 questions per day for logged-in and premium users, respectively. According to a MoneyControl report, Reddit filed its IPO prospectus to SEBI on February 22, 2024. Later that year, the company established its offices in India under India's legal framework, which mandates that social media companies have physical offices in India. Earlier last year, Reddit went public in the US. The platform has been free for all since its debut in 2005. However, Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, indicated in Reddit's AMA session that some of the content may go behind the paywall from this year. The traditional search engine landscape is changing. In 2022, The New York Times reported: "For Gen Z, TikTok Is the New Search Engine." In the same year, Google's Vice President, Prabhakar Raghavan, commented on the growing shift trend from traditional search engines. "Almost 40% of young people, when looking for a place for lunch, don't go to Google Maps or Search. They go to TikTok or Instagram," he said at a Fortune's tech conference. Following this trend, Google made a deal with Reddit to give it exclusive access to its User Generated Content (UGC). As part of their deal, the micro-blogging platform updated its Robots Exclusion Protocol, a technology used to grind website content, to prevent other Generative AI companies from scraping their data. This resulted in Google preferring the results from Reddit to the traditional SEO-optimised web pages. Google had a monopoly in the search engine space for a long time. Now, the monopoly is slowly breaking in many ways. On the one hand, the tech giant is facing multiple anti-trust lawsuits across the globe including in India, the US, EU, UK, Australia, Brazil etc. On the other hand, the latest AI-powered tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Perplexity AI have already changed how people generally interact with the internet and search engines. Reddit continues to have a deal with Google. But, how long? Especially when the internet behaviours are slowly changing (read adopting) to AI-based browsers and search engines, including Google with its Gemini AI tool. The community-driven platform Reddit is known for its user-generated content that is more personal, direct, and experiential compared to many SEO-optimised blog posts and their redundant, overwhelming content. Reddit is one more social media platform that has come up with its own AI app. Recently, X also launched its own AI app, Grok, which is infamously known for its abusive language and is trained on X's user data. According to the media reports, Meta is also planning its standalone AI app to reach non-Meta users beyond Instagram and WhatsApp.