Google and Reddit on Thursday said they were partnering on work around artificial intelligence and content.
As part of the deal, Google will get access to Reddit’s data API, which gives the search giant content from the social network that it can use to train its AI systems. In return, Reddit gets access to Google’s AI systems, which will help with searching within the site. Its Reddit posts will also surface higher in search results.
The deal is likely the one Bloomberg reported on last week, in which an unnamed company was giving $60 million on an annualized basis to get access to its content. The deal was said to serve as a model for future agreements around the use of content to train AI systems.
Reddit declined to comment, citing its quiet period ahead of its initial public offering. A spokesmen for Google wasn’t available to comment on the report.
The explosion of interest in AI, sparked by ChatGPT early last year, has fueled an arms race between tech giants looking to establish dominance in this area. Google is one of the many companies that have poured resources into AI, with the belief that the interactions and relationships between users and their systems represent the future of technology.
Google said that the expanded partnership does not alter its policy of using “publicly available, crawlable content for indexing, training, or display” in its products.
Likewise, Reddit said the partnership doesn’t change its own data API terms, which prevents its data from being used for commercial purposes without the company’s approval.