Reddit Signs Deal with Google for AI Model Training

Social news and discussion website Reddit is expanding its partnership with tech giant Google, the company said on Thursday. Reddit said the deal—which will give Google access to nearly two decades of user-generated content—will make it easier “to discover and access the communities and conversations people are looking for on Reddit.”

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Reddit signed a contract with an undisclosed AI developer for a deal worth $60 million. Today’s announcement confirms speculation that the company in question was Google.

I mentioned yesterday that Google’s best strategy for maintaining AI dominance will be using its deep pockets to lock down sources of training data.

We’ve now learned Reddit has signed a $60M/year deal to provide its data to an unnamed AI company. Key question is if exclusive? pic.twitter.com/U3wGynmXnS

— Dare Obasanjo🐀 (@Carnage4Life) February 17, 2024

“By making Reddit content and communities easier to find, we’re able to uphold our belief in the open internet while better serving current users and reaching new audiences,” Reddit said. “All of this builds on our existing partnership with Google Cloud to integrate new AI-powered capabilities to improve Reddit and help achieve our mission of bringing community, belonging, and empowerment to everyone in the world.”

According to Reddit, Google gains access to the library of existing content on Reddit and allows Google to use the Reddit Data API to improve its products and services.

“With the Reddit Data API, Google will now have efficient and structured access to fresher information,” Google said in a press release. “As well as enhanced signals that will help us better understand Reddit content and display, train on, and otherwise use it in the most accurate and relevant ways.”

For its part, Google said Reddit will, in turn, get access to its Vertex AI for enhanced search and “other capabilities.”

Launched in 2021, Vertex AI is a part of Google’s suite of cloud computing services that lets developers train and deploy customized AI applications and models.

Reddit users were mixed on the news but mostly screwed towards a negative view of the implications of Google gaining access to Reddit’s user content.

“Given the ability to filter certain subreddits out, Reddit may offer a higher quality dataset than YouTube if your goal is to tune the AI to a certain POV,” Reddit user u/WayOverPaid commented. “Some subreddits are much more heavily moderated than others.

“There’s no way Google is going to dump all of Reddit into an AI, except as a first go to see how bad it is,” the user quipped.

This comment was echoed by others who said Google would have its hands full purging problematic content gleaned from Reddit.

“So, Google AI will be trained on YouTube and Reddit?”asked u/REOreddit. “Well, I certainly don’t envy the people that will have to work on making the resulting AI model not toxic.”

The $60 million AI deal comes as Reddit is reportedly eyeing an initial public offering (IPO) in the near future. Citing people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that the social media platform is looking to go public sometime in March 2024—long after first filing an application for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2021.

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