Many people all around the world add Reddit to their searches to find authentic and useful results. This practice has become so common that even Google recognized it and announced that it will use Reddit posts to train their AI. So, this means that now users will see Reddit posts and threads with AI generated content that will be made to promote different products. ReplyGuy, an AI service that automatically plug-in products on Reddit is pushing a lot auto-generated content on the platform. Some examples of it have already been seen on Reddit with one AI bot promoting a text-to-voice product called AnySpeech and another bot writing a comment about debt consolidation program and advertising Debt Freedom Now.
As per 404Media, there is also a video demo available that shows that users can write their product, name of the company and URL to advertise the product. There is also an option to choose keywords that can help the AI bot know which types of subreddits to look at while promoting the product. The video demo also shows how ReplyGuy is already replying to some subreddits and promoting the product naturally. The response then gets many upvotes and replies.
The creator of ReplyGuy, Alexander Belogubov, has also shared other bot-controlled accounts that are responding with different things all over Reddit. Belogubov also has a startup named “Stealth Marketing” that shares the ways users can advertise their products all over Reddit. The users of Reddit have always been suspicious of AI activities on the platform where an AI response looks human-like and can be seen promoting different products. But Reddit was still safe from too many bots on the platform as other social media sites have already become full of them. Reddit has already banned many AI accounts as well as the ones Alexander showed in his screenshots.
Even with all of these AI bots, Reddit has a long way to become a platform infested with AI. Many brands and companies are interested in Reddit for promoting their products to rank high on Google search. Many users on Reddit are against people creating fake stories on ChatGPT to post on Reddit and get engagements. Users of Reddit also identify and shame accounts that spam the votes and posts. A youtuber called SEO Jesus said that Reddit even has the ability to outrank top websites. ReplyGuy is doing spam and content manipulation on Reddit which should be addressed by Reddit if we want to protect the authenticity of this platform.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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