We got early access to Reddit Answers. It was about as accurate as the average Redditor.
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- Reddit Answers is the social media site's new AI-powered search tool.
- Reddit Answers uses AI to summarize information from posts.
- We tried an early-access version. Here's what we found.
It's been a good year for Reddit.
The company went public to much fanfare. It has continued to grow in value as it makes its useful data available to AI companies like OpenAI and Google. It's also leveraging AI to refine its own search, muscling in on traditional search engines.
At an event in October, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said users are already Googling "with the intention of ending up on Reddit."
"I think what's happening is people know that Reddit has answers, advice, perspectives on just about whatever you're looking for," Huffman said.
With this in mind, Reddit unveiled Reddit Answers earlier this month. The search tool uses AI to scour information from community posts and repackage it as a concise answer to a question. In its announcement, Reddit said the feature will provide information, recommendations, discussions, and "hot takes" based on questions submitted by users.
Reddit Answers is still in beta and is only available to "a limited number of users in the US," the company says. Reddit granted Business Insider limited access to try it out. Here's what we found.
How Reddit Answers works
Reddit Answers shows a large search box at the bottom of the screen where users can input their questions. After asking a question, Reddit's AI generates a summary followed by subsections with bullet points, each with hyperlinks to their source on Reddit.
The format of Reddit Answers is similar to the format of Google's AI overview, which is now found at the top of a Google search.
Business Insider asked each search engine the same questions about the best method for smoking brisket. Each search engine provided a summary followed by recommended techniques. Each technique in both summaries was followed by information with a hyperlinked source.
Kenneth Niemeyer
The notable difference between Google's AI overview and Reddit Answers is that all the sources linked in the Google overview went to sources outside of Google, including some to Reddit.
Kenneth Niemeyer
Reddit Answers struggled with recent news
Reddit Answers seems to work well for generalized advice like cooking tips, but it showed some difficulty with newsier items and sometimes makes mistakes in its summaries.
When asked, "Who won the New Orleans Saints game?" on Sunday, December 15, Reddit Answers said it could not find any information on the topic. When rephrased to "Who won the New Orleans Saints game today?" the site generated a summary from the New Orleans Saints vs Philadelphia Eagles game from September 22, three months prior.
Kenneth Niemeyer
Each summary that Reddit Answers generates ends with three recommended "subreddits" related to the topic.
Subreddits are individual pages dedicated to discussing a particular topic. For questions about the Saints game, Reddit recommended r/eagles, r/saints, and r/nfl.
BI also asked Reddit about the recent controversy surrounding actor Blake Lively. On December 20, Lively filed a complaint against her "It Ends With Us" costar, Justin Baldoni, accusing him of sexual harassment and conspiring to damage her reputation.
BI asked Reddit Answers on December 26, "Why is Blake Lively trending, and what are the key takeaways?" Reddit Answers responded with a one-sentence summary that said Lively had recently attended the "It Ends With Us" premiere on August 8 and listed some takeaways from the event.
Kenneth Niemeyer
The section that Reddit dedicated to the film's costars, Lively and Baldoni, did not mention any of their legal disputes. That section had one hyperlink to a Reddit post where one user commented on Lively's dress at the premiere five months earlier.
"Gorgeous. But I want someone to spill the Justin Baldoni sized tea. SPILL IT," the comment says.
Kenneth Niemeyer
Reddit Answers performed better on complex subjects that have multiple viewpoints
Reddit Answers was better at pulling together differing viewpoints from posts across Reddit about complex topics. BI asked Reddit Answers, for instance, "What are the pros and cons of a universal basic income?"
Reddit Answers responded with a summary that said universal basic income is "a hotly debated topic with strong opinions on both sides."
It listed three pros and three cons of a universal basic income. The pros were economic stimulation and poverty reduction, empowerment and freedom, and simplification of welfare systems. The cons were high costs and funding issues, inflation and market distortion, and work disincentives.
Kenneth Niemeyer
Each pro and con was followed by a link to one or two Reddit posts on the topic. Most posts linked to the pros (three out of five) came from the subreddit r/casualconversations. The other two posts linked to the pros came from r/neutralpolitics and r/basicincome.
Two of the linked posts for the cons came from r/askaliberal, and two others came from r/neutralpolitics. The remaining two reference links for cons came from r/askreddit and r/nostupidquestions.
Kenneth Niemeyer
Most of the linked reference posts for the pros and cons only included a link to the Reddit post from which Reddit Answers pulled its information. Some of those Reddit posts cited other publications. One referenced a Stanford University article, while another included a broken link to an Encyclopdia Britannica webpage.
All the Reddit posts that Reddit Answers linked to as sources for the universal basic income question were at least six months old. The oldest post was six years old and was linked as a source three times on the page.
All told, Reddit Answers has the potential to quickly summarize Redditors' views on diverse and complex topics, but it appears to have some learning to do itself before it can truly compete with Google.