Reddit turns text posts into podcasts and short videos using AI

Reddit has spent two decades as the internet’s sprawling text-based town square. Now it wants to sound like one too. The company is testing a feature that converts text posts into short videos and audio segments, using AI-generated voices to narrate original posts and selected comments. The experiment effectively turns static Reddit threads into something closer to a podcast or a TikTok clip, complete with on-screen text that highlights in sync with the narration. How it works The feature takes an existing Reddit post, pulls the original question or statement along with a curated set of comments, and layers AI voices over the text. Each video carries a label reading “Real conversation voiced by AI,” which is Reddit’s way of being upfront about the fact that no actual humans recorded these clips. One of the early examples is an eight-year-old thread from r/boardgames where someone asked for recommendations on good road trip games for adults. That thread, which originally attracted 101 responses, has been repackaged into a roughly three-minute video. Instead of scrolling through years-old comment chains, users can just hit play. CEO Steve Huffman discussed the test during Reddit’s Q2...