People increasingly ask ChatGPT instead of Google. So marketers now plant fake opinions on Reddit, hoping the chatbots repeat them. Reddit is fighting back with AI of its own.
Reddit has a new spam problem, and a strange one. Brands seed the platform with stealth marketing, Bloomberg reports. They plant posts and comments that pose as genuine user opinion. The goal: get AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini to quote them as real advice.
Why Reddit is the target
OpenAI and Google both pay Reddit for its content. Chatbots lean on the site because people trust its unfiltered, human conversations. That trust makes Reddit one of the most cited sources in AI answers. It also makes it the perfect place to game.
Plant the right thread, and a chatbot might recommend your product as if a real person had vouched for it. That is the heart of a fast-growing discipline called generative engine optimisation, or GEO. Think of it as the AI-era successor to search engine optimisation.
