Reddit is a great place to find information online especially if you value personal experiences and insights. For the most part, Reddit search does the job just fine, but now it looks like the company wants to pivot to AI .

During Reddit’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman revealed plans to upgrade and improve the platform’s search features. Huffman believes that AI could be useful when it comes to Reddit search, especially given that the types of things people ask on Reddit are a little different.

According to Huffman, “There’s a type of query we’re, I think, particularly good at — I would argue, the best on the internet — which is questions that have no answers, where the answer actually is multiple perspectives from lots of people.”

It’s not surprising to see Reddit turn to more AI. The company already saw a fair amount of success with its AI-powered Reddit Answers feature . The feature grew from 1 million weekly active users in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter. The feature also goes beyond just typical summaries . It points users to threads and posts on Reddit for additional context or details.

Competing with Google

That being said, Reddit is not alone in trying to use AI to power search. Other companies, most notably Google, have done the same. Google has its own version in the form of AI Overview, which helps summarize information at the top of the page when users search. This saves users time from having to sift through websites to find what they need. However, this comes at the cost of lower traffic to websites.

Google also expanded the functionality of AI Mode , allowing users to seamlessly go from search to chatting with Gemini for a deeper dive into the topic. In addition to Google, AI companies like Perplexity, Anthropic, and OpenAI are also empowering the next-generation of search.

Thanks to the use of natural language, more users are using AI models like Claude and ChatGPT to find what they’re looking for. We doubt that Reddit plans to compete with Google in the search space. However, with the use of AI, Reddit could make itself a one-stop-shop for users seeking answers and insights from actual humans.