AI Loves Reddit, but Redditors Aren't So Sure

**Ryan Knutson** (0:05)
Have you ever asked an AI chatbot to give you a list of recommendations? Maybe something like, what are some good restaurants in Mexico City? Or what are some family Halloween costume ideas? Or what's the best product to get this mustard stain out of my shirt?
If you've done this, there's a good chance the chatbot is getting its ideas from Reddit.

**Katie Deighton** (0:27)
Artificial intelligence, Google Gemini, Claude, they scan the Internet, they look for high-trustworthy sites, and they scrape that content and they use that to make their answers. Reddit has proven to be a really important place for that.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:45)
That's our colleague Katie Deighton. She says that Reddit, with years and years of posts from real people about a huge mix of stuff, is a goldmine for a large language model.

**Katie Deighton** (0:57)
Before we even had LLMs and chatbots that we were using all the time, people would go on to Google and they would go, take me to Reddit. Like, I know that I will get a straightforward answer that will be crowdsourced by the human population, and I don't think I'm going to get caught out by any subliminal marketing.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:18)
This role that Reddit is playing in AI is a game-changer for the platform, and it's also causing brands to rethink how they participate on Reddit.

**Katie Deighton** (1:30)
Brands suddenly care about Reddit after years and years, decades of brands not really thinking too much about this platform. However, advertising is the thing that maybe threatens what is Reddit at its core, which is honesty, real people, and no manipulation of what you see on that platform.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:59)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Monday, August 31st.
Coming up on the show, the battle over the soul of Reddit.

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**Ryan Knutson** (4:05)
For the uninitiated, can you tell me about how Reddit works?

**Katie Deighton** (4:09)
So Reddit isn't one thing. Reddit is an absolutely massive amalgamation of various subreddits. So you often go to a particular category of interest for you. So one of my favorites is a subreddit called TV Too High.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:26)
TV Too High?

**Katie Deighton** (4:27)
TV Too High. So there's a big community of people out there that think people are placing their TVs too high on the wall.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:33)
Oh, yes, they do.

**Katie Deighton** (4:34)
They do.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:34)
I remember the first time that I hung a TV on the wall. I sat down on the couch. I hung it to me standing and I sat down on the couch. I was like, oh no, what have I done?

**Katie Deighton** (4:43)
Right.
If you have a fireplace in your room, unfortunately, there's often no other place to put it. They hate that.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:52)
Reddit users are passionate, and there's a subreddit for nearly everything.
Whether it's about how high up you hang your TV, or energy drinks, anime, or even spicier stuff. I'm not going to mention on this family-oriented podcast.