OpenAI has struck a deal with Reddit to have access to real-time content from it’s data API. The pact is similar to the one Reddit signed with Google in February to give the search engine giant "more efficient ways to train models". It’s not clear what AI-powered features Reddit will build into its platform as a result of the partnership.

The deal comes close on the heels of Sony Music, which represents artists like Adele, Harry Styles and Beyonce, sending letters to OpenAI, Microsoft and Google to forbid anyone from training, developing or making money from AI using its songs without permission.

In recent months, OpenAI has made deals with several publishers, including the Associated Press and the Financial Times to use their content to be used in training AI systems. Last month, eight US newspapers including the New York Daily News and Chicago Tribune, sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.

In the US and the EU, there have been concerns about whether it is copyright infringement to train data on such content. The issue is being debated in court in the US where several separate cases have been filed by the likes of The New York Times and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.

“Reddit has become one of the Internet’s largest open archives of authentic, relevant, and always up-to-date human conversations about anything and everything,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman. Investors look at selling data to train AI models as a key source of revenue beyond Reddit’s advertising business. Earlier, OpenAI launched its new AI model and desktop version of ChatGPT to expand the use of its popular chatbot and take on Google’s Gemini model.

Redditors have been vocal about how Reddit’s executives manage the platform. In June last year, more than 7,000 subreddits went dark after users protested Reddit’s changes to its API pricing.

Users have posted one billion times and offered 16 billion comments on the platform as of the end of 2023 and the platform could be a gold mine for generative AI companies to train their models on content involving text and images.

An API, or application programming interface, is a set of rules that allows software applications to communicate with each other to exchange data.