Reddit is testing a new way for people to access Reddit content: converting text posts into audio/video content. As part of an experiment, some posts are adapting to videos that use AI voices to read the main post text and some comments. The video highlights the text as read by the AI voice, and below the video, a note says it’s a “real conversation voiced by the AI.” An old post on r/boardgames from eight years ago with 101 responses to a request for good road trip games that adults will like is an example of Reddit’s AI at work. Instead of the usual text thread, you have the main question on top of a three-minute video filled with AI voices reading the answers. You can still access the post from a slider at the top marked “Read” for text or “Play” for video. Playing the video is probably easier for someone not used to Internet forums, but it could present other problems, such as mispronunciations or quoting incorrect comments. The launch follows Reddit recently saying in an earnings letter to shareholders that it was “reimagining how users and communities connect, share, and consume content through a modernized video experience on Reddit.” On an earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman also hinted at this new experiment, saying the company was working on a way to let people listen to posts in the background. He noted that there is an “emerging type of content” where people read Reddit content (there are entire video channels that are just AI voices reading Reddit posts) and Huffman said that an overheard or spoken version of Reddit “can also be really engaging.” Reddit manually selects posts that become videos. “This is an early, limited experiment to understand whether people find these formats useful and how we can deliver them in a way that feels authentic to Reddit,” according to Kim. The experiment will start with “select existing posts first” and will expand to more existing posts over time. Update, August 17: Added that Reddit manually selects which posts become videos.
