Oh No, This Startup Is Using AI Agents to Flood Reddit With Marketing Slop

The net is becoming flooded with AI-generated content, and 1 of the fewer places wherever humans tin inactive spell to speech with different humans has been Reddit.

Unfortunately, a caller selling automation startup called Astral wants to alteration that and bring LinkedIn-tier selling slop to the treatment committee site. The startup’s laminitis Savannah Feder published a video connected X Thursday demonstrating however utilizing AI agents successful a browser window, her instrumentality tin navigate done Reddit and automatically constitute comments promoting immoderate it is simply a marketer mightiness beryllium trying to sell.

Like different computer-use agents precocious demoed by the likes of Anthropic and Google, Astral tin instrumentality implicit a section browser and implicit tasks by archetypal capturing screenshots of a leafage and analyzing them utilizing AI to fig retired what to bash adjacent based connected a prompt, yet sending commands backmost to the mouse. “Look however Astral finds the close places to click,” Feder says arsenic the bot starts logging into Reddit. “It’s honestly truly fascinating to spot however it navigates the tract conscionable similar a quality would.” The video goes connected to amusement however the bot navigates to the subreddit /r/productmanagement, searches for posts astir “user research,” and past “writes a reply that promotes the merchandise without sounding excessively sales-y.”

The imagination for these bots is that they volition assistance grandma navigate her machine by herself, not make selling automation spambots that flood societal media. Certainly, this has to beryllium wherefore truthful galore radical amusement disdain for AI: It is being deployed by the worst radical you know.

Announcing Astral – an AI marketer that works 24/7 to turn your startup.

Astral navigates websites, creates content, and runs selling crossed socials.

Watch Astral automate Reddit successful real-time: pic.twitter.com/XbpKt0lZqd

— Savannah (@SavannahFeder) January 9, 2025

This should beryllium further grounds that AI is astir to make a oversea of undifferentiated mediocrity, and bland contented arsenic acold arsenic the oculus tin see. Anyone who has spent capable clip connected LinkedIn oregon X has seen generic, soulless posts that are evidently written with AI, and present idiosyncratic has excitedly built a instrumentality to bring this to Reddit. Imagine being arrogant of this, similar being arrogant of peeing successful someone’s pool. What is possibly astir disheartening is that the radical creating tools similar Astral genuinely look to judge AI is conscionable arsenic bully arsenic a quality astatine originative tasks.

Incredibly, aft idiosyncratic asked Feder wherefore Astral uses an AI cause moving successful a section browser alternatively than a Reddit API, she explains that is due to the fact that Reddit and different societal media sites restrict utilizing their APIs for automated tasks. There is simply a crushed for that: Because it is spammy and annoying. She adjacent excitedly explains to different idiosyncratic that the bot tin successfully bypass CAPTCHAs.

Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit, replied to the post with a GIF of Patrick from SpongeBob starting to cry.

It volition beryllium absorbing to spot however platforms similar Reddit instrumentality anti-bot measures to combat the slop.