For many years now, Reddit has been like the internet’s unofficial town square.
As of 2025, according to Reddit’s Audience Insights, there are now 443 million+ weekly active “uniques” (users) on the platform, 185 million of which are located in the US.
Reddit is an archive of experiences and discussions, and its community has long been at the heart of what makes it tick.
Now, it’s added a new aspect to the mix: AI.
Here, we will dive into what Reddit Answers is and how to use Reddit’s AI chat. Plus, we’ll provide a quick overview of Reddit’s data/content usage, considering the platform’s partnerships with OpenAI and Google, as well as its lawsuits against AI companies Perplexity and Anthropic.
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First off, let’s start by describing what Reddit’s AI Chat actually is.
Known as Reddit Answers, the new AI chat feature is a significant evolution in how content is consumed on the platform.
Reddit Answers soft-launched in December 2024 to limited users in the US.
As of October 2025, Reddit Answers is available around the world in select languages as a beta version across desktop and mobile devices (Android and iOS). The AI chat offers users a conversational interface and differs from other chatbots like ChatGPT as it dives straight into Reddit’s own content.
The tool is built using Google Gemini (as noted in Google Cloud’s PR release) and can be found within Reddit’s search architecture.
The tool works in a pretty simple fashion. Users pose questions, and then Reddit Answers quickly provides a succinct, bullet-point answer, generated entirely by AI.
Step 1: To open Reddit Answers within the app, just look for the “Ask” icon in Reddit’s search bar (screenshot below).
Step 2: Next, type a question into the Reddit Answers search bar.
Step 3: Review the Reddit Answers’ generated response. For more insights, you can then click the link to check out the referenced post within the thread.
Reddit Answers cites user posts/threads reflecting that user posts are now integral to the platform’s AI chat.
The Reddit Answers FAQs note that data collection and usage comply with their privacy policy: “Data is collected and used in accordance with Reddit’s privacy policy.”
This does have the benefit of citing/sourcing the information and crediting the poster. At the same time, it’s an important aspect for users to keep in mind when considering how content/posts are used on the platform.
Additionally, in the context of platform data usage (beyond Reddit Answers), Reddit has partnered with Google and OpenAI, providing access to its Data API. Then, it also filed data-related lawsuits against AI companies Perplexity and Anthropic in 2025.
In 2024, Reddit entered into partnerships with Google and OpenAI, providing the companies access to Reddit’s Data API. In 2025, The Verge reported that Reddit was looking to renegotiate its deal with Google, looking to earn more for the data it provides the company.
Then, in October 2025, Reddit filed a lawsuit against Perplexity for illegal scraping, as reported by CNBC, “...Reddit has launched a lawsuit against artificial intelligence company Perplexity, alleging that it illegally scraped user posts to train its AI model, marking the latest data-rights clash between content owners and the AI industry.
This followed Reddit’s earlier actions in June 2025 when it sued Anthropic for similar reasons (illegal scraping), as noted by The Guardian,“Reddit has sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, alleging that it is illegally “scraping” the comments of Reddit users to train its chatbot Claude.”
Read more about Reddit users’ options for data/information usage in Reddit’s data usage guide and Reddit Answers FAQ guide.
As you can imagine, these quick AI summaries offer several notable benefits.
Traditionally, browsing Reddit can take a lot of time, as it requires plenty of deep scrolling through threads and then subthreads. Reddit Answers solves that by summarizing the best content from the most relevant threads, all in a matter of seconds.
One of the main concerns that users have with other AI tools is that they are trained on web-scraped data, and often sound robotic or formulaic. However, Reddit Answers is grounded in community discourse, meaning the information should reflect human nuance, peer validation, and lived experience much better (however, it’s important to keep in mind that study findings indicate some Reddit posts are Likely AI).
Each AI answer comes with citations that link directly to original Reddit threads, allowing users to verify, explore, and evaluate the source material themselves.
However, there are also several challenges to be aware of.
While Reddit Answers does include source links, there are concerns that AI-generated responses tend to actually summarize or paraphrase without proper accreditation. As posts are redacted to bullet points, it’s easy to see how nuance and the unique voice of the original writer can get lost in the shuffle.
Like any LLM and social media platform, Reddit Answers is vulnerable to misinformation; in this case, it draws from Reddit threads (some of which may include misinformation). So, it’s important to fact-check information.
Reddit Answers reflects a wider trend: users are increasingly using summarized, content-rich answers over scrolling through threads or clicking on multiple search results.
If it is a success, expect to see other social media platforms implement similar approaches.
The platform deserves credit for linking sources, so that users can read more about a summarized thread.
At the same time, it’s still important for users to fact-check information and be mindful of the possibility of potential misinformation being amplified by the tool.
However, the true test will come when we see how Reddit handles attribution and user input about the feature and how it maintains community trust.
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