I was browsing Reddit looking for an answer to a question I had.

One well-written and informative comment caught my eye. So much so that I graciously shared it across LinkedIn.

Curiosity kicked in. I decided to investigate the user’s profile. Right away I noticed that this user’s comments were all well written. As if they had some sort of Ivy League background.

Then it hit me.

I noticed that hundreds of comments were written within an hour.

AI.

Bots have always been a problem on Reddit (and the situation is getting much worse too). However, creating bots requires a bit of speciality knowledge. This prevented the masses from bot creation and spamming threads.

That’s changed. Now, anyone can create a new user with just a few simple clicks and generate AI-written answers en masse.

I’m sure this is obvious to almost anyone reading this post, but it’s easy to forget when you’re scrolling through a sea of comments and getting caught up in the conversation.

So let this post be a reminder :)

Poor Reddit. Anonymous, text-based platforms are especially vulnerable to AI manipulation. It’s (almost) impossible to tell what’s human-written and what’s AI-generated.

A few questions I’m asking myself:

Will AI-generated content come to dominate Reddit? If that happens, what unique value does Reddit offer compared to tools like ChatGPT?

Is it a good idea to short Reddit’s stock. ;)