In a bold move that is set to change the face of artificial intelligence, Reddit – the leading social media network – has signed a revolutionary content license agreement with Google, enabling the use of the huge repository of diverse content as a source of data for Google’s AI models. Google, the Google-owned Alphabet, has allegedly disclosed aiding the transformative partnership with a whopping $60 million per year.
The partnership makes sense now, as Reddit is gearing up for a stock market flotation and needs more sources of revenue amid competition from TikTok and Facebook for ad dollars. While Reddit and Google refused to comment on the details of the agreement, sources close to the matter suggest the strategic significance of this deal for both.
Last year, Reddit disclosed that it would monetize the application programming interface (API), and that was the first deal with a major AI player which marked the beginning of its journey. The synergy of Reddit’s huge and niche discussion communities, which have more than 100 million members together with Google AI models demonstrates impressive convergence of content and technology.
The reported $60 million yearly contract reaffirms the importance of Reddit’s bounty of user-generated content to Google, showing how much they value Reddit. Such a decision aligns with an ongoing trend in the AI industry where major players focus on partnerships with content providers as a way to improve and broaden their training datasets.
Reddit goes public, with a plan to file its IPO as early as this week. The company will be selling 10% of its shares, with a valuation of about $10 billion. Thus, this initial public offering of the leading social media company would be the first of its kind since the initial public offering of Pinterest in 2019.
In an area where the use of online content for AI training is criticized for copyright problems, Reddit’s deal with Google puts it among the content providers that are properly doing their jobs, and it also opens new ways of revenue generation.
The tech world is eagerly waiting for the launch of this epic collaboration, and the partnership between Reddit and Google will certainly be an intersection of social media and artificial intelligence, which can bring many innovative developments to both platforms and shape their future.
