In a bid to tap into the lucrative generative AI market, Reddit has announced a new pricing tier for its API access, called ‘Premium’, which will require big businesses to pay for expanded access to Reddit conversation data. The platform has provided API access since 2016, allowing various providers to gather data from Reddit conversations, which has been used to power AI models such as Google’s Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. With generative AI set to make big bucks, Reddit wants its fair share and plans to charge developers for this access.
According to Reddit, its Data API was launched over seven years ago to enable developers to build great products for users and moderators. However, with its platform having one of the largest corpus of human-to-human conversations online spanning the past 18 years, Reddit also feels an obligation to be stewards of this content. Thus, the new pricing plan will ensure the company gets its fair share of the generative AI market.
Twitter also recently updated its API pricing for similar reasons as OpenAI and other platforms have been using tweet info to power their models. Social platform data is crucial for generative AI models to develop an understanding of human language, and what people mean when they communicate. Reddit and Twitter are providing that insight, and it makes sense that they now also want their fair share of the lucrative generative AI market.
For Reddit, charging some developers for expanded access to conversation data is another potential revenue pathway, and with the company planning its IPO, it could be a valuable supplementary income stream. Reddit is also rolling out some new tools for moderators to assist in managing their subreddit communities. These tools will provide moderators with more ways to manage their in-app communities, including updates to mod log and rule management, and additional mod queues. These tools will help to keep the army of mostly volunteer moderators happy, especially given that they too could raise questions about the company bringing in more money and not passing that onto them.
