Reddit has launched a new AI-powered feature called Reddit Answers, powered by Google Gemini. It scans posts and comments across subreddits, summarizing all of that collective wisdom into a tidy, AI-generated response to your question. It’s fast, convenient, and (for some people, at least) genuinely useful.
But after trying it myself, I’m not fully sold. That’s not because Reddit Answers doesn’t work. It does exactly what it’s designed to do. But like many AI features right now, it left me with a familiar feeling that I’m being nudged to prioritize convenience over curiosity, and speed over depth.
What is Reddit Answers?
Reddit Answers is an AI tool that generates answers to your questions by pulling from multiple threads across the site. You can find it at reddit.com/answers or in the Reddit app (it’s in beta at the time of writing and only available in select regions).
Ask a question, or even just type in a few words on almost any subject, and Reddit’s AI gives you a summarized response. It’s well-formatted and easy-to-read. Every time I’ve tried it, answers have been broken down into bullet points and packed with links that can take you to the original posts and comments.
It’s sort of like using ChatGPT, but specifically trained to distil Reddit threads – and, importantly, it’s very good at citing its sources.
Reddit has been working on this for a while, and it’s clear the company sees potential. After all, Reddit has always been a goldmine of niche expertise and lived experience, but not always the easiest place to search. Its own search function has historically been poor (I’ve often had better luck typing “site:reddit.com” into Google). So maybe this is Reddit catching up.
What it’s like to use Reddit Answers
I use Reddit a lot for recommendations, especially for tech, movies, fitness, and skincare, where anecdotal experience often matters so much more than general advice.
To test Reddit Answers, I typed in: “best dupe for the ordinary Multi-Peptide + HA Serum (formerly called buffet)”. For those not skincare-obsessed, I’m asking for a dupe (a similar item) to a popular serum from skincare brand The Ordinary.
It’s something I’ve been genuinely researching, so I had a good idea of what to expect.
The results were surprisingly useful. Reddit Answers returned a list of solid alternatives, complete with bullet-point summaries explaining what to consider, like price, texture, formulation, and who it’ll suit.
Each point included a link to the original Reddit post or comment it was pulled from. It felt almost like reading a trusted skincare site, but powered by a range of actual user experiences rather than relying on the views of just one beauty reviewer.
Interestingly, it didn’t appear to just repeat the most upvoted answers either. It offered a mix of popular recommendations and some unexpected options I hadn’t come across before.
Overall, I didn’t feel like I was starting from scratch, and I appreciated the ability to click through and read more if I wanted to.
Why Reddit Answers works – to a point
There’s no denying the appeal. Reddit Answers is fast, simple to use, and genuinely helpful when you’re short on time.
It gives you quick access to consolidated information, drawing from discussions that might otherwise take ages to sift through manually. I know this all too well as I’d already spent a few hours looking at various skincare subreddits to try and figure out an alternative to the serum.
The summaries are easy to scan. But if you want more, you can click through directly to the original posts and comments that fed the AI’s response.
The interface feels user-friendly and accessible, especially for research-heavy queries, like product recommendations or travel planning. Though much simpler ones, or just keywords like “south of France travel” yielded really helpful results too. Reddit also says the tool updates frequently, so the information you get is less likely to be outdated.
For those who want solid answers without wading through dozens of threads, Reddit Answers delivers exactly what it promises – and that will be enough for plenty of people.
The problem with neat answers
For everyone who enjoys this simplified, AI-powered search experience, I suspect there’ll be just as many who choose not to use it.
One of the things I’ve always loved about Reddit is the journey. Scrolling through a thread, watching debates unfold, seeing someone change their mind halfway through a conversation.
Reddit isn’t just about answers. It’s about context, tone, back-and-forth, credibility checks, and those unexpected side quests that often end up being the most useful part.
With Reddit Answer, that experience gets a little flattened. The nuance is reduced, and all the messiness – the very thing that makes Reddit feel alive and more human than most corners of the internet – is cleaned up and packaged, more like a helpdesk response.
A huge part of using Reddit is also about the process of judgment. When I read through a thread about a product or a decision, I’m not looking for the answer. I’m watching how people reason, how they disagree, how they qualify their experience. That process helps me make up my own mind, and AI can only replicate that so far.
I’m also fascinated by what gets surfaced. I assume Reddit Answers is trying to find the “best” response to a given question or search string. As it’s powered by Google’s Gemini AI I don’t doubt it’s good at sifting through vast amounts of data. But if that’s the case, what would “best” even mean here? If it’s just what’s popular or sounds authoritative, then we risk losing the quieter, weirder, more surprising insights. The kind that Reddit has always been good at surfacing, if you’re willing to dig a little.
And then there’s this: what we say we go to Reddit for isn’t always what actually keeps us there. Sure, I tell people I use it most for workout plans, tech advice, movie reviews, and skincare recommendations. And I do. But I also spend time reading weird space facts, looking at eerie liminal space photography, and scrolling through glitch-in-the-matrix stories.
Reddit Answers might work for about half the reason I use Reddit. But it’s that other half, the part where I get completely lost in something unexpected, that makes the platform feel genuinely special.
Whether you’ll like Reddit Answers may depend on how you already use Reddit, and that might change from one day to the next.
If you’re looking for fast recommendations, product lists, or consolidated information, it’s genuinely helpful. If you’re someone who values the time-saving side of the internet, where efficiency is everything, this tool will make Reddit more useful than ever.
But if you come to Reddit to learn, discover unexpected ideas, get lost in threads, or to make up your own mind by reading the full conversation, then Reddit Answers might not feel like an upgrade but a simplification. Because sometimes the best part of Reddit for me is the part I definitely didn’t come looking for.
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