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Don’t be surprised if ChatGPT starts referencing Reddit posts. OpenAI has reached a deal with Reddit to bring its user-generated content to the popular chatbot.
The partnership will let OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other programs pull content from Reddit, an online forum with over 267.5 million weekly users loaded with conversations about fresh topics.
Reddit didn’t directly say if its data will be used to train any OpenAI models. But in the announcement, the company noted that OpenAI will have access to Reddit’s Data API, “which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit. This will enable OpenAI’s AI tools to better understand and showcase Reddit content, especially on recent topics.”
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and financial terms were not disclosed. Still, it’s no secret that all kinds of tech companies have been scraping the internet to train their AI models. Last week, Reddit itself announced a new policy explaining how it can license the platform's data to third parties, including “large language model makers.”
Reddit argues the deal will help expand the reach of the platform’s content and pave the way for new AI-powered features for regular Reddit users and forum moderators. OpenAI will also become a Reddit advertising partner.
For OpenAI, the Reddit partnership could make ChatGPT a more formidable competitor against Google, especially when it comes to searching about recent events and topics. Recent rumors suggested OpenAI was working on a search engine for ChatGPT, but this week's OpenAI event instead focused on a new AI model, ChatGPT-4o.
That said, Google itself struck a $60 million deal with Reddit in February to source content, potentially for AI training purposes.