Reddit deploys AI in fight against manipulation by bots
To counter the growing wave of AI-generated marketing junk, Reddit has implemented its own AI-driven countermeasures. The platform is currently fighting ‘stealth marketing’, a strategy in which companies post fake reviews and discussions to mislead AI chatbots such as Gemini and ChatGPT into recommending their products. Because these bots rely on huge datasets and often see Reddit as a bastion of authentic human opinions, the site has become an important target for brands wanting to influence AI-generated suggestions.
The trend is part of a broader shift in the sector towards ‘generative search engine optimisation’ (GEO), the successor to traditional search engine optimisation. Instead of focusing on Google rankings, brands now aim for visibility in AI answers.
There is a lot at stake: venture capitalists are pumping money into specialised companies such as Profound, which recently reached a valuation of more than $1 billion (€880 million). Research by Cornell Tech has further confirmed those efforts, showing that AI tools can indeed be influenced by strategically placed, user-generated content.
In response, Reddit is using large language models to identify complex, coordinated patterns of misleading behaviour that earlier filters were unable to detect. The company reported that its enhanced automated systems now flag around 25,000 suspicious posts per day.
According to a recent company update, these improvements led in the first quarter to a 20% decrease in user exposure to spam compared with the previous year. Reddit’s strategy includes analysing account signals at the moment of creation in order to block bad actors before they can interact with the community.
The persistence of stealth marketers
Despite the technological barriers, some marketing agencies continue to find loopholes in the system. Shanzila Ahmed of ReachLLM noted that while some posts from her agency are quickly quoted by ChatGPT, others are immediately removed by Reddit.
Some clients have even tried to bypass moderation by setting up their own niche subreddits. Although that increases the risk of permanent account bans, marketers see the process as a continuous cycle of creating and removing content.
Ultimately, Reddit employs a hybrid defence system, combining AI with human oversight. The company revealed that between July and December 2025, community moderators were responsible for more than half of all content removals.
This ongoing struggle represents a digital arms race between the platform’s pursuit of authenticity and the marketing industry’s urge to be picked up by AI tools.
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