misk

Reddit Answers uses AI to answer your questions with summarized information from across the platform.

Reddit is launching a new AI-powered search tool called Reddit Answers to help you more easily find information on the platform. The tool, similar to other AI search products, responds to queries by generating well-formatted responses and showing links to its sources.

But the distinction with Reddit Answers is that it sources things directly from Reddit, which means it could be a way to skip Google and get information directly from the source. Reddit has already been cracking down on where you can search for things from Reddit, and Google is the only major search engine that shows recent Reddit results. But Reddit probably would prefer if you did searches right on its platform, and Reddit Answers might prove to be a good way to do so.

Reddit Answers will initially roll out to “a limited number of users” in the US and in English, and it will be available on the web (not on Old Reddit) and iOS. (“We’re working on Android as we speak,” Serkan Piantino, Reddit’s VP of product, said in an interview.) Reddit plans to bring the tool to more languages and locations “in the future,” according to a blog post.

Reddit gave me access to a test version of Reddit Answers, and while I haven’t been able to mess around with it very much, I’ve liked what I’ve seen. There’s a big box to ask a query, but the initial Reddit Answers page also floats a bunch of suggested searches you can click on, like “favorite Nintendo character of all time,” “best mystery novels of 2025,” and “tips for flying with a baby for the first time.”

I clicked that last one, and the tool quickly pulled together a list and some bulleted suggestions with hyperlinks on the text and an arrow to click to see the source of the information. When you click either, a sidebar pops up showing the exact post where the information comes from.

This is from a test version of Reddit Answers, so things might look a tad different when you try it. But you can get the gist.

A Reddit site search for the same query on Google, on the other hand, just gave me a standard long list of links to evaluate and click through. On its face, Google’s version, which doesn’t have the summaries or bullet points, isn’t as immediately informative as Reddit Answers. But personally, I’m pretty skeptical of AI summaries anyway — they can make some pretty bad errors! — so for me, the Google results are still perfectly fine as a way to explore some potentially useful posts on Reddit. 

My Reddit site search on Google.

Reddit Answers can also pick up on things happening on Reddit within minutes, according to spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt, so there’s also a chance responses to your queries will have timely results. I haven’t had much luck with that; on Friday, for example, I asked “who won yesterday’s NFL game,” and instead of pulling up answers about Thursday’s Packers-Lions game, it included details on the Eagles-Ravens game that happened on December 1st.

That might have just been a quirk of the product not being fully ready yet. In my testing, though, Reddit Answers has been much more useful as a jumping off point to dig into a more general topic on Reddit rather than an up-to-the-minute s

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/19972070

Text: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-playstation-30th-anniversary-what-if-digital-foundry-existed-in-1994

Text: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-playstation-30th-anniversary-what-if-digital-foundry-existed-in-1994