OpenAI and Reddit have entered into a partnership that will see the artificial intelligence (AI) firm get access to Reddit’s real-time data for ChatGPT and any new AI products the company launches in the future. Reddit will also be able to leverage OpenAI’s technology to bring AI-powered features to its platform. OpenAI will also become an advertiser on the latter’s platform. Notably, the social media platform signed a similar deal with Google in February, reported to be worth $60 million (roughly Rs. 500 crore) a year.
The details of the partnership were shared in a blog post from Reddit. No financial terms, however, were revealed. OpenAI will get access to Reddit’s Data API (application programming interface), which will allow the company to pull real-time content from the platform and use it for ChatGPT and future products. Interestingly, it was not mentioned whether the data will be used to train the AI models or to show up as query results. The latter would not be out of the question given that several recent rumours suggest that OpenAI is working on an AI-powered search engine that could rival Google Search.
Reddit is also benefitting from this deal as the social media platform will get access to OpenAI’s AI models to build features for its platform. The company said it will soon introduce AI features for redditors and the mods (the moderators of subreddits).
Notably, OpenAI made a disclosure in its announcement post, confirming that company CEO Sam Altman was a shareholder in Reddit. The deal, however, was led by COO Brad Lightcap and was approved by its independent Board of Directors. Notably, SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings of Reddit highlight that Altman is the third largest shareholder of the company.
Last year, Reddit had sparked outrage in its community by announcing its intentions to charge for its API, which was kept free ever since the company’s inception. The change was not well received in the community as many third-party apps that used its API could not afford to run, and many subreddits went private to protest the move. However, the company remained firm on its decision. Now, one year later, the API is a commercial tool which has already been sold to Google and OpenAI. The social media platform went public in March 2024.
