Reddit rolls out AI-powered 'Answers' search feature, redditors don't rejoice

Reddit's internal search engine is often criticized as one of the site's weakest features but the platform claims AI integration will make it "faster, smarter, and more relevant." Reddit Answers, which the site announced has begun rolling out to a limited number of users in the US today, allows redditors to "ask questions and …

[theOtherJT]

Amazing!

They've actually found a way to make the Reddit search less effective. I genuinely didn't think that was possible given how low the bar they were starting from was, but here we are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing!

Their ultimate aim is to spur a new competitor who will eat their lunch. Can't wait.

[IGotOut]

The magic AI phrase

"you'll start to see this over the course of the next year,"

They can never say what AI is good for right now, right at this moment, despite constantly ramming this down our throats. The bullshit line is always "It's GOING to be amazing"

Which begs the question "So why should I just not wait until it's ready?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"curated summaries of relevant conversations and details across Reddit … including links to related communities and posts,"

That's an awfully long way of saying "drivel"

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Time to use redact on my account...

[wolfetone]

Are we at peak dead internet yet?

It feels like we are every day, but then more shit happens to make me wonder if we're still climbing.

[beast666]

Echo chambers

Reddit and Bluesky are the worst sort of echo chambers.

[Wang Cores]

Oh fuck off

The baizuos are already irrelevant in the west, comrade. Make to focus on decadent rightists for greater glory of The Peoples Republic and Chairman Xi.

[sarusa]

Re: Echo chambers

Da! Not like glorious X - which was neer Twitter - where Glorious Comrade Elmo aggressively mutes disharmonious sounds to achieve only the finest of echoes, like Sevruga Caviar eaten off finger stumps.

[Casca]

Re: Echo chambers

No, thats your skull.

[sabroni]

Re: Reddit and Bluesky are the worst sort of echo chambers.

Not enough fascists for you? Try Twitter?

[mostly average]

It's bovine excrement...

...excreted a second time. As with every algorithm, garbage in, garage out. As Dumbledore (never) said, "Reddit brings us neither knowledge, nor truth. Men have wasted away, even gone mad in front of it. But the memes are occasionally dank AF."

[sarusa]

Tongue in Cheek?

I have to think (or hope) that most complaining on reddit is just pro forma (as it usually is), because anyone left there has to know:

1) reddit's 'new' management are some of the shittiest of shitty people.

2) reddit is where *google* goes to turn its own AI search into a clown show of hilariously wrong life ending or at least crippling suggestions.

3) reddit is not the sort of company that would be able to implement any sort of useful search - they never have been able to in their entire existence, how could they suddenly?

4) This is very obviously just to pump their stock up with more AI bullpuckey.

So anyone who was seriously expecting anything useful is just A Very Special Boy.

[SJohnson]

So what?

When has reddit been anything other than a cesspool for people who can't function in society without proper supervision. AI searching will only bring the irrelevant snark to your life much sooner. If you're already on reddit? delete your account. It's the only reasonably smart thing to do.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: So what?

Won't all social sites end up on that route? Snarks and angry idiots get more responses than simple civil conversations and more responses == more money from ads. AI will just amplify and accelerat the degeneration.

[Yankee Doodle Doofus]

Re: So what?

Unfortunately, reddit is one of the best places to find certain info. You are just forced to wade through all the crap on your way to it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Internet gave us social media which discovered profit in pushing sensational dis-information and subversiveness over all else.

AI is now putting that program on steroids.

[Irongut]

Conversational interfaces are the worst interfaces, so ineficient.

I don't want an ineficient search engine that returns "curated summaries" I want one that returns links to relevant posts and stays out of my way.

Not that I've ever used Reddit's terrible search since DDG, Google, etc work far better.

Fuck Spez.

[RT Harrison]

In before it turns into a sweary, racist bot that suggests you remove yourself from the gene pool and also suggests links to NSFW reddits.

[Anonymous Coward]

NSFW subreddits you say? Maybe I'll actually give this thing a try! (AC that didn't realize he was in the super special beta test group when the Answers icon showed up).

[O'Reg Inalsin]

From "Am I the Asshole?" to ....

... The transition shouldn't be too hard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reddit knows that at the end of the day, having a first rate search for what amounts to a mountain of the worst spewing of social abominations, creepyness, and outright stupidity, buys them nothing, rather an AI fine tuned and blinder-ed to obfuscate the true nature of that pile of waste is welcomed by their PR droids.