Reddit plans to launch a new AI-driven search tool in 2025

During a recent earnings meeting, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced that the company plans to launch a new upgraded search tool in 2025. This tool is designed to help users browse platform content more efficiently, answer “subjective, complex and interesting questions” and provide a more personalized search experience.

The new tool will integrate the Reddit Answers feature, where users can not only ask questions in this feature, but also get refined summary and responses related to the question. This will greatly improve users' ability to quickly obtain valuable information from a huge library of content. Huffman mentioned in the meeting that Reddit's discussion data has accumulated a wealth of content over the past 20 years, and this information is the potential value that the Reddit Answers feature wants to unlock.

AI-driven functions enhance, promoting platform development

Huffman also revealed that Reddit is actively forming a dedicated search team and hiring engineers to accelerate the development of this new feature. In addition, Reddit continues to embrace artificial intelligence technology, launching AI-powered translation capabilities last year and plans to further expand AI services in 2025. Currently, Reddit is also testing AI-based search results pages that not only summarize and recommend content from different communities, but also provide users with a more targeted search experience.

Improve user retention and growth and drive revenue growth

Huffman also mentioned that in the future, Reddit may integrate search functions with the platform's user engagement process to further optimize user growth, improve retention rates and ultimately lead to revenue growth. By helping users conduct efficient searches directly and optimize the query process on Reddit, the platform can better capture user demand signals, which provides huge potential for future monetization.

Although the financial performance in the fourth quarter of 2024 disappointed investors, Reddit is still accelerating innovation, exploring more AI-driven solutions to enhance user experience and promote the long-term development of the platform.