Reddit turns to AI moderation to fight covert ads aimed at ChatGPT and Gemini

Reddit Inc. has deployed its own AI-based tool against a new kind of spam, Bloomberg reports. The platform is going after covert marketing content that brands post so their products get mentioned by popular AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

What is AI marketing spam

These are posts and comments dressed up as organic user discussions but actually written or paid for by brands. The goal isn't to push a post to the top of Reddit for human readers. Instead, brands want to influence what chatbots cite or recommend when a user asks an AI for product advice. It's a new form of astroturfing: content used to be optimized for search engines, and now it's being optimized for the answers of generative AI models.

• The spam poses as natural user discussions and reviews
• Brands aim to get into the answers of popular chatbots, including ChatGPT and Gemini
• Reddit is countering these posts with its own AI moderation tools

Why Reddit became the target

Reddit is one of the most frequently cited sources for major AI chatbots. Both users and language models see it as a place for real, unedited human opinions rather than corporate marketing. That reputation for "real voices" is exactly what makes the platform such an attractive target for brands that want to quietly slip product mentions into the content AI systems draw on when generating answers.

How the company is fighting the spam

Rather than relying on manual moderation, Reddit uses its own AI systems to distinguish organic discussions from coordinated promotion. It's part of a broader fight by platforms against so-called "AI slop": low-quality content mass-produced or paid for specifically to game algorithms rather than to reach real readers.

What it means

As chatbots become a full-fledged channel for search and purchase decisions, user-generated content platforms have to open a new front in the fight against spam. This time the battle isn't over a spot in search results, but over what exactly an AI will cite in its answer.