Reddit's AI Answers & Meta's Vibes App

Summary of Reddit's AI Answers & Meta's Vibes App

by The Jaeden Schafer Podcast

11m•February 7, 2026
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Overview of The Jaeden Schafer Podcast

This episode covers how major social platforms are shifting from treating AI as a side feature to positioning it as a core product for discovery and monetization. Jaeden reviews recent moves from Reddit (AI-powered search / Reddit Answers) and Meta (testing a standalone AI video app called Vibes), explains product changes and monetization strategies, and plugs his startup AIbox.ai’s new $9/month tier that consolidates access to 40+ AI models.

Key takeaways

  • Social platforms increasingly see AI as central to content discovery and future revenue, not just an engagement tool.
  • Reddit is betting on generative AI search (and curated human answers surfaced by AI) as a major long-term monetization path.
  • Meta is testing a standalone AI-generated short-video app (Vibes), exploring credits/subscriptions for AI content creation.
  • Both companies are experimenting with product designs to avoid spammy AI content while extracting value from their user data.
  • Host’s startup AIbox.ai launched a $9/month tier that aggregates many top AI models and tools in one place.

Reddit: AI search, Reddit Answers, and strategy shift

  • Thesis: Reddit believes AI is especially well suited to answer “questions that have no single answer” by synthesizing multiple community perspectives.
  • Usage & growth stats shared on their earnings call:
    • Search weekly active users (WAU): grew ~30% year-over-year from 60M to 80M.
    • Reddit Answers (AI product): grew from 1M WAU in Q1 last year to 15M WAU by Q4.
  • Product moves:
    • Modernizing AI-powered answers with richer, media-heavy responses.
    • Rolling out Reddit Answers in five new languages.
    • Testing dynamic AI agents that appear alongside search results and extend beyond text.
    • Blurring logged-in vs logged-out distinctions (planned for Q3): delivering a personalized experience to anyone by surfacing the most relevant human responses to each question.
    • Treating individual responses/comments as search results (AI finds the best human-generated answers across threads).
  • Revenue angles:
    • Content licensing (allowing others to train models on Reddit data) reported as part of non-advertising revenue:
      • Q4 content licensing: ≈ $36M (up ~8% YoY).
      • Full-year: ≈ $140M (up ~22% YoY).
    • Reddit perceives its large dataset of conversations as valuable for AI training and potential monetization.

Meta: Vibes app and AI video strategy

  • Vibes: AI-generated short-form video feature launched inside Meta AI in September; now being tested as a standalone app.
  • What Vibes does:
    • Create or remix 100% AI-generated short videos.
    • Add visuals, music, style adjustments; share to DMs or cross-post to Instagram/Facebook Reels.
    • Feed experience resembles TikTok/Reels (swipeable AI videos).
  • Usage & rationale:
    • Meta reports growing engagement inside the Meta AI experience, suggesting demand for a dedicated Vibes app.
    • Standalone app creates a clear home for purely AI content and helps manage spam/quality issues.
  • Monetization:
    • Free tier exists; Meta is likely to experiment with subscription tiers or AI credits (pay for credits to generate videos), aligned with broader tests of premium subscriptions across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
    • Host notes precedent for paid features (e.g., Instagram verification) that show direct user willingness to pay for certain add-ons.
  • Context/comparison:
    • OpenAI’s Sora is a comparable standalone AI-video product; early reports indicated usage challenges for Sora, illustrating demand vs. novelty tension.
    • Host’s view: eventual blending of AI-generated and real video on mainstream platforms may reduce need for separate AI-only apps, but companies are exploring controlled spaces to manage content quality.

Larger industry implications

  • AI is shifting from an engagement booster to a core discovery layer—platforms want to use AI to surface relevant content and create paid features.
  • Companies face trade-offs: enabling creative/engaging AI features while preventing spam/low-quality AI output.
  • Monetization pressures (investors, high AI R&D spending) make paid tiers, credits, and licensing increasingly likely.

Host announcement: AIbox.ai $9/month tier

  • New $9/month tier on AIbox.ai.
  • Features:
    • Access to 40+ top AI models (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, Meta, Mistral, Perplexity, XAI, etc.).
    • Image generators included (Ideogram, OpenAI, Black Forest Labs).
    • 11 Labs for audio.
    • Side-by-side comparison of model outputs within chat threads; centralizes conversations so you don’t have to remember which model you used.
  • Positioning: consolidates multiple subscriptions into one playground for experimenting and comparing models.

Actionable next steps (for listeners/readers)

  • If you follow platform product trends: track Reddit Answers and Reddit’s logged-in/logged-out changes (Q3 rollout) to see how search and AI curation evolve.
  • If you build or create content: try Vibes (or similar tools) to understand workflow, distribution, and potential monetization via credits/subscriptions.
  • If you experiment with models: consider trying AIbox.ai’s $9 tier to compare outputs across models in a single workspace.
  • Watch monetization models: credits, subscriptions, content licensing, and premium features are likely to be the main commercialization paths for AI features on social platforms.

Notable quote (paraphrased from Reddit CEO Steve Huffman): Reddit excels at queries that have no single answer—AI can synthesize multiple perspectives, which maps naturally to Reddit’s discussion-driven content.