Why Reddit's COO Thinks It Might Be AI-Proof

As artificial intelligence impacts the operations of digital media publishers, Reddit chief operating officer Jen Wong believes that the community platform might be one of the few companies insulated as a result of being focused on human interactivity and first-hand knowledge sharing. “We think we will become more important in the future no matter what, in any AI-summarized world, because we have the original source of human ideas,” she said in conversation with Adweek CEO Will Lee at NexTech in New York. Wong also spoke about the importance of Reddit’s search engine as a target for future investment. “We want search to be unique and interesting on Reddit because we have this overlay of communities and unique data points that are not that exposed elsewhere. So search is really important to Reddit because it is what people are coming for. They're coming for information and to learn about new interests,” Wong explained. Reddit sees search as critical for its growth and distinct from TikTok due to being conversation and word-based, offering depth of ideas across its communities. Jen Wong, COO of Reddit and Adweek CEO Will Lee. “You get to express a complex thought on a lot of topics on Reddit that are complicated. There's AI and singularity and all these ideas, and those require full sentences of thought that are not soundbites in order to engage in conversation,” she continued. Wong theorized that Reddit could also change mindsets, as multiple conversations take place daily offering different viewpoints for people to consider. She also noted that Reddit was set to “become more important” in an AI-summarized world because it hosted so many original human ideas. “You're always going to need humans to evaluate new products and services; somebody has to go drive the car, or somebody has to go and eat that new snack, a real person has got to make their determination, no computer’s going to do that. A computer will summarize that, but at the core, those ideas are going to come from humans.” As a former COO and president of digital at Time, as well as chief business officer for PopSugar and global head of business operations for AOL, Wong was upbeat about the future of digital publishing as it faces a number of headwinds, not least the threat of AI-generated content and Google’s ongoing search algorithm changes. Reddit Hires Former Meta Exec as It Continues to Woo Marketers “It is a moment where I'd say if you're a content holder, I'm sure everybody is reflecting on ‘What is my role in this ecosystem?’ And I do think that content holders have a lot of rights in that, because it is your IP, both for the training of models for the conversational nature of it and for the display of it. Think of those two things separately.” The nature of publishers' relationships with search is set for disruption, she added, with the transformation coming from the standpoint of the user. “I'm a believer that good content will find its way. It has been hard for the publishing business. I've done three tours in digital media, and my heart breaks for some of what's happened to that industry. But I believe that alternatives to ad-supported [revenue streams], not necessary subscription, will have to emerge in order to make it sustainable.”