After Stack Overflow, OpenAI Is Coming After Your Reddit Data

The popular chatbot ChatGPT will now be able to access content from Reddit thanks to a partnership between the two firms announced on Thursday.

Highlights:

• OpenAI and Reddit shake hands, with mutual interests.
• OpenAI wants to take access of Reddit’s real-time content and Reddit wants to improve its platform with the help of OpenAI’s powerful GPT driven data.
• The deal adheres to Reddit’s privacy policies and is deemed to be safe.

Just a few days ago OpenAI and StackOverflow shook hands on a deal that completely disrupted the developer community and put most Stack Overflow users in a state of unrest. The deal was being heavily questioned as to why would OpenAI have access to Stack Overflow user’s content.

Now OpenAI is here again striking another deal with one of the most powerful and open social media platforms out there ‘Reddit’. What is OpenAI planning to do by getting real-time access to Reddit’s data? Let’s find out through this article.

The OpenAI and Reddit Deal

In order to surface talks from the website within ChatGPT and other new products, OpenAI signed an agreement to gain access to real-time content from Reddit’s data API. It’s a comparable deal to the $60 million deal Reddit reportedly inked with Google earlier this year. The deal skyrocketed Reddit’s shares by more than 12%.

Additionally, the agreement will allow Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to Redditors and mods and let developers create apps using OpenAI’s extensive language model library. Additionally, OpenAI has registered to work with Reddit as an advertising partner.

Reddit is the place of countless communities, never-ending dialogue, and genuine human connection. There’s a community on Reddit for everyone, regardless of your interests—breaking news, sports, TV fan theories, or an endless feed of the latest trends in AI and technologies.

Reddit is a community of unusual size and vibrancy that has long been a significant online forum for discussion. Additionally, Reddit is able to enhance everyone’s user experience by utilizing LLMs, ML, and AI. This is why the company has put pen to paper with the AI supergiant with goals of mutual benefits in mind.

The blog post announcing the deal did not include any financial details, and neither company made any mention of training data. Although OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a Reddit stakeholder, it is disclosed that “This partnership was led by OpenAI’s COO and approved by its independent Board of Directors.”

However, this deal has come off as a surprise to many recently. OpenAI hasn’t been open to sharing its AI-driven data with most firms. Former CEO Elon Musk also left OpenAI as the company had shifted from its Open Development goals. This all changed when the company first gave the AI access to Stack Overflow to improve its API and now it is doing the same with the world’s largest community discussion place, Reddit.

How will the Deal Benefit the both?

This deal has a mutual benefit for both OpenAI and Reddit. Reddit receives real-time access to Reddit postings that feed into ChatGPT, and OpenAI receives access to Reddit’s technology for developing AI capabilities.

Let’s take a deeper look into the benefits:

OpenAI will help users find and interact with Reddit communities by integrating Reddit information into ChatGPT and other products. In order to accomplish this, OpenAI will make use of Reddit’s Data API, which offers original, structured, and real-time content from Reddit.

This will improve Reddit content understanding and presentation for OpenAI’s AI tools, particularly for topics that are new. So not only will this keep OpenAI more updated with real-time information but it will also make it more responsive across a diverse variety of content.

“OpenAI will bring enhanced Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products, helping users discover and engage with Reddit communities. To do so, OpenAI will access 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’s latest blog on partnership with Reddit

On the other hand, Reddit will be able to offer additional AI-powered capabilities to moderators and Redditors as a result of this relationship. Reddit will leverage OpenAI’s AI model platform to realize its ambitious goals.

Imagine to what heights reddit’s optimization and filtering techniques would go to with OpenAI’s advanced AI capabilities. Recently GPT-4o arrived with it’s enhanced natural language interaction capabilities, maybe Reddit can go to another level of discussion forums.

“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. 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.”

Steve Huffman, Reddit Co-Founder and CEO, source Reddit.

Is the Deal Safe?

Reddit just released its Public Content Policy to enable communities, developers, and academics to better understand Reddit’s views on user protections and access to public content. Reddit firmly believes that everyone has the right to privacy.

This relationship complies with other content agreements and does not alter the Developer or Data API Terms of Reddit, which specify that content accessible via the Data API may not be utilized for profit without Reddit’s consent. Under their published threshold, API access is still free for non-commercial use.

So, at least Reddit users for now can be sure of their data privacy and integrity. The privacy matter has been a hot topic for now after Stack Overflow users felt violated that OpenAI was accessing their content without giving them credit and taking their permission.

Conclusion

This deal has quite the potential to completely change things for both OpenAI and Reddit users. Imagine an OpenAI with access to real-time data and an AI-driven Reddit with powerful capabilities. Soon we can get to experience this firsthand!