The companies announced on Thursday that OpenAI will have access to Reddit data for training its artificial intelligence models and will employ its technology on the popular discussion platform.
Reddit, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this year, is seeking to enhance revenues by capitalizing on the value of exchanges in its varied discussion groups.
Financial details of the partnership between the San Francisco-based tech firms were not disclosed. Reddit primarily relies on advertising for its revenue.
“Reddit has become one of the internet’s largest open archives of authentic, relevant, and always up-to-date human conversations about anything and everything,” Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman said in a joint release.
“Including it in ChatGPT upholds our belief in a connected internet, helps people find more of what they’re looking for, and helps new audiences find community on Reddit.”
OpenAI will access Reddit data in real-time, enhancing such content in ChatGPT and powering tools on the social media platform, the companies stated.
Reddit experienced a major outage in June last year as the site’s communities protested against new fees for providing access to developers.
The dispute was part of the fallout from the recent artificial intelligence revolution, with Huffman unwilling to allow companies building AI chatbots like ChatGPT to have free access to the site for perfecting their large-language models.
Analysts suggest that Reddit may need to increase spending on content moderation.
“Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use,” Huffman wrote in a Reddit post at the time.
Reddit is essentially run through thousands of “subreddits” – forums on a vast array of topics moderated by their creators. The biggest subreddits have tens of millions of subscribers, including r/funny, r/games, and r/music.
Some habits on Reddit have become social media standards, including AMAs, or Ask Me Anything sessions, where users can ask an interviewee anything during a specified time window.
OpenAI noted in the release that its chief executive, Sam Altman, is a shareholder in Reddit.
