Google seals AI training deal with Reddit

The partnership with Google marks Reddit’s first known agreement with a significant AI company.

Google and social media platform Reddit have formed a partnership where Reddit will supply its content as artificial intelligence (AI) training data to the search engine. In a recent announcement, Reddit mentioned that it will offer Google improved methods for training models.

Through the collaboration, Google will be able to use Reddit’s data application programming interface (API), which provides real-time content from Reddit’s platform. This will offer Google an effective and organized method to access Reddit’s extensive content, enabling the display of Reddit content innovatively across Google’s products.

In this collaboration, Reddit will access Vertex AI, Google’s AI-powered service designed to enhance search results for companies. Reddit clarifies that this update doesn’t impact the terms of its data API, maintaining restrictions on commercial access without approval for developers or companies.

This partnership with Google comes after Bloomberg reported that Reddit secured a $60 million training agreement with an undisclosed AI company. Reddit announced a plan to charge companies for using its API in the past year. The partnership with Google marks Reddit’s first known agreement with a significant AI company.

In 2023, Google updated its privacy policy to allow it to use publicly available data for artificial intelligence training. This update came shortly after OpenAI, the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT developer, was charged with a class-action lawsuit in California over allegedly scraping private information from users via the internet.

Related: Google updates Gemini AI, apologizes for ‘woke’ inaccurate imagery

However, according to updates to the Claude developer’s commercial terms of service, generative AI startup Anthropic promised not to use client data for large language model (LLM) training from Jan. 2024.

Despite this deal, Google and Reddit haven’t always seen eye to eye. Reddit previously threatened to block Google from crawling its site over concerns that companies would use its data for free to train AI models.

After a yearslong run-up, Reddit filed its initial public offering (IPO) on Feb. 22 to boost its valuation, which sat at more than $10 billion in 2021. The IPO filing, expected to go public in March, will be the first major social media IPO since Pinterest’s in 2019.

Makers of AI models have been actively securing agreements with content owners in recent months to broaden their training data beyond extensive web scraping, as numerous content owners claim their material was utilized without permission.