At 20 years old, Reddit is defending its data and fighting AI with AI

For 20 years, Reddit presented itself as “the first page of the Internet”. AI threatens to change this.

As social media has changed in the past two decades with the transition to the mobile and the most recent emphasis on short video, peers like Myspace, Digg and Flickr have faded in oblivion. Reddit, meanwhile, refused to die, to extinguish and win an audience of more than 108 million daily users who gather in more than 100,000 subdredit communities. There, the Reddit users keep it old-fashioned and let themselves be simple comments on their hobbies, hobbies and favorite interests.

These text comments generated by the user are a treasure which, in the era of artificial intelligence, Reddit fights to defend.

The emergence of AI chatbots as OPENAI Chatgpt, Claude d’Anthropic and Google Gemini threaten to inhale large expanses of service data like Reddit. While more and more people are turning to chatbots for more information for which they have previously gone to websites, Reddit is faced with a Gargantusen challenge to win new users, especially if Google Search the valves to dry.

CEO Steve Huffman explain The situation of Reddit to analysts in May, saying that challenges like that of AI poses can also create opportunities.

While “the research ecosystem is under heavy construction”, Huffman said that he was betting that the voices of Reddit users will help him stand out in the middle of the “Annotted sterile responses of AI”.

Huffman doubled this notion last week, saying on a podcast That reality is AI is still in its infancy.

“There will always be a need, a desire for people to talk to people about things,” said Huffman. “This is where we are going to focus.”

Huffman may be right on the basis of faithful Reddit users, but in the AI ​​era, many users “simply go as simple as possible,” said Ann Smarty, marketing and reputation management consultant who helps brands monitoring consumer consumers perception on Reddit. And there may be a easier way to find answers on the internet than just asking a question, said Smarty.

“People don’t want to click,” she said. “They just want these quick answers.”

In a sign that the company believes so deeply in the value of its data, Reddit heard Anthropic earlier this month, alleging that the AI ​​startup “has engaged in illegal and unfair commercial acts” by scraping the sub-drives to improve its models of important languages.

While the authors of books have taken businesses like Meta And Anthropic before the court alleging that their models of AI violate the law on copyright and have suffered recent lossesReddit based on the argument of unfair commercial practices. The case of Reddit seems to focus on “the commercial exploitation of anthropic data they do not have,” said Randy McCarthy, head of the IP law group in Hall Estill.

Reddit defends his content platform generated by users, said Jason Bloom, president of IP dispute at the Haynes Boone law firm.

The Social Media Society of “detailed and informative discussions” is particularly useful for “forming an AI bot or an AI platform”, said Bloom. Like many IA researchers have noted it, the large volume of moderate Reddit conversations can help to ensure that AI chatbots produce more natural consonance answers to the questions covering countless subjects than to say a university manual.

Although Reddit has linked to AI Data license agreements With Openai and Google, the company allegedly allegedly allegedly siphoned its data without obtaining permission. Reddit alleys that anthropic renowned actions “interfere with the contractual relations of Reddit with Reddit users,” said the legal file.

This lack of clarity concerning what is authorized with regard to the use of data scratching for AI is that the case of Reddit and other similar proceedings are legal and AI experts.

“Commercial use requires commercial terms,” ​​said Huffman on the best podcast. “When you use something – content or data or a resource – in business, you pay it.”

Anthropic does not agree “with Reddit’s claims and will defend us vigorously,” said a company spokesperson at CNBC.

Reddit’s decision to continue the allegations of unfair commercial practices instead of copyright violation highlights the differences between traditional publishers and platforms like Reddit who hosts the content generated by users, said McCarthy.

Bloom said Reddit could have a valid file against Anthropic because social media platforms have many different sources of income. One of these sources of income is to sell access to their data, said Bloom.

This “allows them to sell and dismiss this data for legitimate uses while protecting the confidentiality of their consumers and so on,” said Bloom.

Reddit not only repels AI. He launched his Reddit responds to the AI ​​service In December, using OpenAi technology and Google.

Unlike general use chatbots which summarize the web pages of others, the Reddit chatbot responds generates responses based only on social media service, and it redirects people to source conversations so that they can see the comments of specific users. A Reddit spokesperson said more than a million people used Reddit responses each week.

Huffman has launched Reddit answers as a tool of the best worlds, sticking together the simplicity of AI chatbots with Reddit’s comment corpus. He used the functionality after seeing the Music Music Group JLAY recently in San Francisco.

“I said to myself, how long is this set? And Reddit could tell me that it is 90 minutes because someone had already asked this question on Reddit,” said Huffman on the Podcast.

Although investors are concerned about AI which has a negative impact on the growth of Reddit users, the senior analyst on the Internet of Seaport, Aaron Kessler, said that he agreed with the feeling of Huffman that the original content of the site gave him respect.

People who visit Reddit often look for information on things or places that interest them, such as tennis snowshoes or ski resorts, Kessler said. These user data indicate “the commercial intention”, which means that advertisers consider more and more Reddit as a place to broadcast online announcements, he said.

“You can say on which page you are in Reddit what interests the consumer,” said Kessler. “You might even say that there are stronger signals on Reddit compared to a Facebook or Instagram, where people can simply travel videos.”

WATCH:: Reddit pursues an unjustified anthropogenic use of content.