Reddit Plans to Test AI-Generated Summaries & Paywalled Subreddits

Reddit will soon begin testing AI-generated summaries. During the company’s earnings call this week, CEO Steve Huffman revealed that AI-generated summaries and recommendations will be added to search result pages later this year. These will be based on a combination of first-party and third-party models.

In addition, Reddit may also experiment with paywalled subreddits, where users pay for access to exclusive content or private areas.

Why It Matters: AI-generated summaries have been rapidly making their way to social media, with platforms like YouTube already leveraging them. Reddit hopes to help users delve deeper into content and better understand it, especially when threads are long and people seek quick, concise information.

With paywalled subreddits, creators and moderators could directly drive revenue through their communities, which would also provide another revenue stream for Reddit by taking a cut of transactions. Monetization has been a key focus since Reddit became a public company, leading to investments in its advertising and partnerships.