Reddit is gearing up for a major overhaul in 2025, integrating AI deeper into its search capabilities. CEO Steve Huffman has disclosed that the platform will enhance its search experience to assist users in answering complex and subjective questions. At the center of this transformation is Reddit Answers, an AI-powered tool that decorates and summarizes discussions across the platform, minimizing dependency on third-party search engines.
During Reddit's Q4 2024, Huffman emphasized the untapped potential of the website's two-decade-old archives. "Our users have left this absolutely massive corpus of information, so we're starting to unlock that with Answers," said the CEO. The feature is intended to uncover relevant insights by aggregating talks and summarizing key findings. Early tests reveal that people looking for advice—such as "tips for flying with a baby for the first time"—get short, bullet-pointed recommendations that link back to the original threads.
Beyond improving information retrieval, Reddit plans to integrate its AI-powered search into the user onboarding process. Huffman suggested that giving new users better search capabilities might boost engagement, retention, and possibly profitability. "Helping the user be able to search directly on Reddit, refine their queries on Reddit, [and] eventually come directly to Reddit for those types of queries...that signal [has] incredible monetization potential," he noted.
However, AI-powered search comes with its own challenges. Early tests reveal that while the tool performs exceptionally well for general knowledge, it struggles with rapidly changing topics like real-time sports results. Nevertheless, Reddit remains committed to improving the feature. CFO Drew Vollero confirmed that the company is hiring engineers to build a dedicated search team to enhance these capabilities.
Despite these advancements, Reddit's Q4 financial performance disappointed investors. The company reported 101.7 million daily active unique users, which fell short of the expected 103.1 million. Additionally, modifications to Google's search algorithm had a major impact on traffic.
Reddit Answers is currently available to a limited number of users in the U.S. on the web and iOS. So an Android version and extended language support are still in development. Reddit's push into AI signals a bold move to transform how users interact with its massive knowledge base.