Reddit gives OpenAI access to its wealth of posts


AFP
May 17, 2024


Along with accessing 'subreddit' posts in real time, OpenAI will provide artificial intelligence powered features at Reddit under the terms of a new partnership. — © AFP ROBERTO SCHMIDT

OpenAI will have access to Reddit data for training its artificial intelligence models and will put its technology to work at the popular discussion platform, the companies said Thursday.

Reddit, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year, has been seeking to capitalize on the value of exchanges in its varied discussion groups as it seeks to improve revenues.

Financial details of the partnership between the San Francisco-based tech firms were not disclosed. Reddit relies on advertising for revenue.

“Reddit has become one of the internet’s largest open archives of authentic, relevant, and always up to date human conversations about anything and everything,” Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman said in a joint release.

“Including it in ChatGPT upholds our belief in a connected internet, helps people find more of what they’re looking for, and helps new audiences find community on Reddit.”

OpenAI will access Reddit data in real-time, enhancing such content in ChatGPT and powering tools at the social media platform, the companies said.

Reddit suffered a major outage in December as the site’s communities protested against new fees being charged to provide access to developers.

The row was fallout in the recent artificial intelligence revolution, with Huffman unwilling to allow companies that build AI chatbots like ChatGPT to have free access to the site to perfect their large-language models.

“Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” Huffman wrote in a Reddit post at the time.

Reddit is essentially run through thousands of “subreddits” — forums on a dizzying array of topics moderated by their creators.

The biggest subreddits have tens of millions of subscribers, including r/funny, r/games and r/music.

Some habits on Reddit became social media standards, including AMAs, or Ask Me Anything sessions where users can ask an interviewee anything during a certain window of time.

OpenAI noted in the release that chief executive Sam Altman is a shareholder in Reddit.