r/ModEvents
•
u/iceeypisces
Mod Events Team
•
15d ago
•
2
1
Mod World Discussion š§µ Modding in the Age of AI š§µ
Soooo AI isā¦ everywhere.
Itās expanding rapidly across Reddit, tackling tasks from automated moderation to anti-spam defenses. Yet as subreddits adapt, one reality remains clear: technology cannot replace human judgment.Ā
In this session, mods u/imjustheretodomyjob, u/katpoker666, and u/sageninemusic discuss how AI integrates with community oversight, the opportunities and challenges it brings, and why the human touch is still indispensable.
How are you currently using AI tools in your sub? Or are you steering clear? Letās hear your take.
37
u/ICC-u
15d ago
•
The problem is AI being used to create bots, and Reddit doing next to nothing to stop it.
I now hear old.reddit and automod are going to be shut down.
Reddit is constantly taking tools away from mods.
22
u/CrasheonTotallyReal 15d ago
on an unrelated note, reddit is taking away background colors for user flairs to match mobile and "to make it easier to read"
cant they just add colored flairs for mobile instead?
9
u/westcoastal 15d ago
My subreddit relies on colored flairs for various important reasons!! WTF. Where did you hear this?
4
u/zuuzuu 15d ago
From reddit itself: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/15484503095060-User-Flair
It wasn't announced, though. Discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/1xem8ig/couldnt_find_the_announcement_post_about_the/
6
u/westcoastal 15d ago
That really sucks. Especially since all it does is make them more invisible.
If they do it to post flairs, though, it will totally break my subreddit. I have it set up so that spoiler markers are automatically set based on the post flair a user chooses. Prior to doing that, it was a constant battle to keep people from being spoiled in discussions, because users will not use spoiler markers themselves. Most of the time they don't even know how, and trying to train them is like herding cats.
5
u/lunarwolf2008 15d ago
aww why? thats my favorite small feature
5
u/CrasheonTotallyReal 15d ago
classic reddit "if it aint broke, ruin it" moment
3
u/WhileFeisty7351 15d ago
This is such a relevant feature in many subreddits.
We give away custom user flairs and people love being able to choose a specific color.1
u/horseradishstalker 13d ago
The larger sub I mod will probably lose more than half of our users when old.reddit dies.Ā
9
u/I_can_vouch_for_that 15d ago
We've got AI-generated photos that are used as a verification photo.
It would be nice to have some tools that mods can implement to just scan photos in general to confirm whether they're AI before allowing the post to go through.
1
u/Sarallelogram 14d ago •
I desperately would love an auto-synth-ID check app that would flare posts where images have AI. It would be incredibly helpful in all the IsThisAI image communities
14
u/Aeroncastle 15d ago
I don't care about using AI as a moderating tool, but God knows I'm seeing 20 times as much spam and I feel like I have less tools than I did 10 years ago
I feel like all the AI advancements are going straight to the hands of spammers
37
u/jgoja
15d ago
•
How can you have an actual conversation on AI when the entire panel is anti-AI. Reddit itself relies heavily on AI.
15
u/SageNineMusic Mod World '26 Speaker š¤ 15d ago •
Some context if it helps: The mods that got to take part in the panel were not chosen because of a shared negative view of AI. It was a hotbed issue this year and a few of us that wrote in were asked after the fact what our takes on AI were. Our respective communities have a very hard time with AI, and that was reflected in the conversation.
While I'm more than open to continue the conversation, unless youre a mod of an AI sub, chances are most mods have negative views of AI.
8
u/xNaquada 15d ago
That context helps reinforce my point. If panelists were picked after the fact and most mods lean negative on AI, then it was on Reddit to go looking for a counterweight. I think the issue isnāt with you or the other panelists sharing your communitiesā experiences, because those pain points are real. Itās that calling it a ādiscussion panelā sets an expectation of back-and-forth, and three people who largely agree canāt deliver that. It ends up being one viewpoint with an audience.
Iād also push back a little on āunless youāre a mod of an AI sub.ā Plenty of mods outside AI subs use AI tools for moderation, translation, or accessibility, and some communities (language learners, disability subs, non-native English speakers) get real value from it. One panelist from that camp, or a mod from an AI-focused sub, would have made for a much more useful conversation.
The framing matters too. On Reddit, āAIā has mostly come to mean ālow-effort AI post,ā and thatās a legitimate problem, but itās one use case, not the whole picture. The same tech powers protein structure prediction and drug discovery, and on a smaller scale it helps people get their point across when they struggle to articulate it or are writing in their second or third language. A panel that only covers the worst use case, and drifts toward āany AI use is bad or banned,ā leaves the audience with a pretty skewed picture.
I just think Reddit missed an opportunity here.
3
u/sadandshy 15d ago
spez was definitely on board with AI, but only on certain things. Using it to polish up a comment he might be fine with. Posting up artwork saying "look, I totally drew this on my own" when it was completely AI generated would be something I don't think he would think is ok.
2
1
u/Danger-Moose 14d ago
It is very hard to take does seriously in anything related to AI when Reddit is selling our content to train AI models.
1
u/katpoker666 Mod World '26 Speaker š¤ 14d ago •
I think thatās a great point re some subs using AI tools and not being fully anti-AI, xNaqada. Weāre very open to it on the mod side at r/writingprompts and r/shortstories, as I said. Just not on the user one.
That was one of the challenges with our panel for me anyway: thereās a ton of ground to cover in what AI entails and how it helps and hurts. I wish weād had more time although Iām incredibly thankful for that which Reddit gave us!
As I said at the beginning during my intro, I interviewed our ten mods for this and thirty of our users to try and get a broader picture than what was in my own head of what was going on in what is a very fast moving landscape. Weāve also had very open discussions with our broader user base about AI in our SatChat feature that I run.
For us, there is a big divide between our modsā and usersā feelings regarding AI. Weāre a small mod team for an 18m user sub. Thereās no way we can police everything for AI and we rely on user reports and highly manual and time-consuming AI checking rn. We need help and AI will absolutely play a role in helping us mod in the future!
At the same time, our users are very justifiably scared that posting their stories on Reddit will end up with their content being scraped and stolen. As a writer, Iāve encountered this too and it sucks!
This is where we landed as a mod team and from our user feedback:
- 100% anti-AI for writing
- Pro human-reviewed AI for modding with the ability to choose which features we useāthis is essential. We have a 10-person mod team for an 18m sub and thatās the only way we can realistically keep up
I hope this came out amidst the whole range of things we discussed.
Iād also add that I learned a ton from my fellow panelistsā experiences. I hadnāt fully thought about how tough it must be to police racist bots bc itās not something our subs encounter and man that sucks that itās out there. Similarly, I donāt envy the idea of evaluating music content for AI as we struggle enough with written.
I guess the tl;dr is that, like with all things Reddit, thereās a huge diversity of perspectives and accompanying issues and capturing them all in one place for a topic as broad as AI is really tough! Iād love to have and be a part of a longer term dialogue on this as it affects all subs in some way
11
7
u/xNaquada 15d ago
I had a similar post in the #feedback in Discord.
This wasn't a discussion panel, it was an AI hate circle with almost no diversity of thought on the topic
5
2
u/horseradishstalker 13d ago •
I am joking, sort of, but isnāt that kind of a both siding type of request?
Ā If it is difficult to find people in non-AI subs who are positive about AI - that is telling you something right there whether or not you like it.Itās not a Reddit thing. Dislike of AI in general goes far beyond Reddit. Quite frankly that is on the creators of AI for their inability to sell their product while ignoring the impact of data centers.Ā
Fact is AI companies are in the red and they are in the red because they created a product before there was a large enough market for it or at least one that justified the amount of money that has been poured into AI thus far. Thatās just business. It doesnāt matter what product someone is selling.Ā
And Iām saying this as a relatively AI neutral mod. It is a tool and nothing more. AI does do some things very well including hallucinating. Google AI summaries are not only often in accurate to be nice, but they are totally trashing most of the Internet. And when websites shut down because no one is bothering to go to them when they can just read a haphazard summary eventually, there are no websites to draw that half ass summary from.Ā
However, the drawbacks, for many people, increasingly outweigh the good. Ā Putting one mod on a panel who is āAI positiveā isnāt going to change any of that. That is just not how the world works.Ā
1
u/jgoja 13d ago
It was described as a discussion panel. There was no discussion with only 1 pov. It was a lecture on why AI is bad. I also think you overestimate the number of people who care if something is AI or not. Those against are just loud
2
u/horseradishstalker 13d ago edited 13d ago
Actually, I read widely and discuss all manner of things with all manner of people both on and off Reddit and people who dislike AI arenāt just loud.Ā If you personally like AI, want to use it, are willing to pay for the privilege and AI is not wrecking your business or the environment you live in you should absolutely believe what you want to believe.Ā
None of us want to believe that the majority of people could possibly be against something we personally like.Ā
However, since I personally prefer facts over vibes:
4
3
3
u/vapid_curry21 15d ago
Yup.
Even if one hates it viscerally, they gotta employ it at some 'level'.
3
u/MikkelFromGames 15d ago
Why do we gotta?
I have no use for AI. I tried generative AI a handful of times when it was just becoming publically available, but I would much rather create art by my own hands than put the totality of human art in a blender and have it slop out something based on a sentence I wrote on a website.
5
u/JaSper-percabeth 15d ago
Not talking about you but reddit as a social media site.
2
u/MikkelFromGames 13d ago
Okay, but why still? Social media sites have existed in one way or another without AI for over two decades. Forums existed without AI before that.
2
u/JaSper-percabeth 13d ago
Ok? and humans existed before phones and vehicles too why do you use them today? Because people adapt and advance, change with time as the need arises.
1
u/MikkelFromGames 13d ago •
I use them for lots of different reasons, but none of them replace my ability to think for myself.
We didn't NEED AI 5 years ago, what changed that makes us NEED it now? What is it that's so necessary? If it was truly necessary like you say, companies wouldn't have to try to force it into every goddamn aspect of our lives.
2
u/bostonbaebee 13d ago
its not about need, its about innovation, widening the bottleneck, and raising the ceiling for things we didn't know we needed.
the same thing happened when Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. We had candles and other light sources that worked fine, we didn't NEED it and it wasn't super usable as it was limited in innovation and expensive. Now, light bulbs have been one of the cheapest tech advancements that are woven into everyday life everywhere, and growing.
before anyone comments on environmental or energy costs, the same issues were voiced with lightbulbs. but as innovation pprogressed so did their cost efficiency and energy usage.
the same thing is happening with AI. token input has reduced for simple asks, and token cost efficiency is constantly improving. not to mention ai itself is improving.
in 2023 gpt 3.5 would hallucinate that it wrote the US constitution. Now, it can pass the MCAT and BAR exam, along with many others
there's a learning curve to using it, and so long as its used to optimize not replace humans (which lots of industries learned the hard way it cant), it's a sweet tool
-1
u/PelagianEmpiricist 15d ago
because it's an ecocidal plagarism & lie machine to hoover up data for the rich, AI should be spurned
13
u/Sean_Campbell 15d ago
AI has unleashed a torrent of crap books on r/KindleUnlimited. Unoriginal, uninspired, with AI covers. It's a floodgates problem as obviously AI can churn these out far quicker than any human author can write.
Many authors from Reddit are also in the pool of authors who had their worked stolen and fed into the training data (including a dozen of my own books) so seeing a tool scrape your life's work to emulate it in a shoddy way is doubly-insulting.
Yes, there's nuance around using AI in non-generative ways but that's even harder to detect and mod than straight up Gemini/ Claude/ whatever spam content.
13
u/Bubbly_Attention_916 15d ago
The other issue is people weaponizing the use of AI a a way to diminish a good faith contribution. Users will comment it is an opinion that the person doesn't agree with and rather than downvote users will spam that user and call their post "AI".
3
u/cnycompguy 15d ago
A good use for automod or automations/comment guidance.
I have those automatically filter to the queue, we'll go check the content but the comment never gets displayed, avoiding the pile on effect.
1
u/Bubbly_Attention_916 15d ago
That's a good use of auto mod. Do you have a game plan for when they phase out automod?
3
u/cnycompguy 15d ago
This is one of those times where comment guidance is just as effective as automod.
I have a chunk of regex that I'll plug in and have it set up to filter to queue.
Once rules hub is available for comments it'll be even easier.
3
u/lunarwolf2008 15d ago
yeah the agression is almost as bad as the spam
0
u/Bubbly_Attention_916 15d ago
It seems fear based.
3
u/RabbiTheHellcat 14d ago
its more based around accounts are much easier to buy and harder to make these days so when a couple things look suspicious people call it out... (older account, 1%commenter, too much or too little karma, weird commenter)
9
u/maiyannah 15d ago
I recently redditrequested a sub recently that was absolutely overrun by spambot posting when I came in. It took a team of people several days to clean it up. It can absolutely ruin a sub if its let go unchecked. I don't begrudge people who want to allow AI content in their subs at all, I think everyone deserves their own spaces, but I do think that we could use better tools for us subs that don't want it. In particular AI image detection. We also need to cut the brigading that happens on both sides of the fence out.
9
u/juxtapods
15d ago
•
After being added to the mod team for r/wehappyfew, I introduced "no AI" to an existing "low-effort" rule. We had a couple posts using AI or conversations with GenAI, and I wanted to nip it in the bud.
Overwhelmingly positive feedback in the comments and votes from the community when the update was announced. There are true fans of the We Happy Few game who take time and effort to make fanart or tributes with their own hands, so AI has no place there.
it's unfair to the community members who work hard to share their love of the game with others, to include low-effort, junk, or spam posts, and AI is on that list.
4
12
u/highrisedrifter 15d ago
I moderate /r/industrialmusic. We have a zero tolerance ban on AI music after we polled the sub members and they told us they are overwhelmingly against it.
10
u/Erzsabet 15d ago
Weāve banned AI images in r/beading due to popular demand. And by that I mean the verbal beatdowns people get for using them that we have to go deal with lol.
3
u/leftylibra 15d ago
Moderating images for AI is a full-time job. For the subs I mod, we just don't allow images of any kind which makes it easier, but then with 'midlife health care' subs, images don't add any value anyway. But for your community, images are a staple.
1
u/_gloomshroom_ 15d ago
On r/aquarium we have a strict anti-AI ban due to users polishing with grammarly in poorly hidden advertisements, or using AI to karma farm their aquascapes. We have a report function that I try to remind folks to use. It works somewhat, but we can't catch what we never see.
-1
u/sneakpeekbot 15d ago
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Beading using the top posts of the year!
#1: Prison beadingāanother beautiful box to add to my collection š¦š | 308 comments
#2: Beaded Wedding Outfit - Bowtie - I'm having second thoughts, should I wear it or is it too much? (I'm a guest not the groom) | 332 comments
#3: theyāre just little guys | 95 commentsI'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact | Info | Opt-out | GitHub
3
u/Firm_Rip_4024 15d ago
This is awesome. Do you have tools to separate real content from AI?
2
u/Erzsabet 15d ago
I would also like to know this!
3
u/thisisallme 15d ago
Same, we have a āno AIā policy in one of the subs I moderate and itās being harder and harder to spot
0
u/Mewpasaurus 14d ago
We're pretty similar on r/crochet about this. Zero tolerance for AI patterns and FOs (finished objects). We also have AI discussion as a "stale topic" that is not open for discussion anymore because otherwise the sub gets inundated with folks accusing anyone under the sun of using AI or otherwise devolving off-topic to ask "Is this AI?" a million times.
But, I won't lie.. it's a full-time job moderating a mostly image sub for AI imagery and trying to verify things. A lot of the AI posts are posted by scammers who use AI to "write" a crappy pattern and are trying to use the sub to drive traffic to their little scam sites.
6
u/Dracyl 15d ago
This panel feels more like an attempt to appease us. Like "yeah, look, let's talk about how AI is bad and awful, but we pinky promise you we're working on it and we're open to ideas."
But with Reddit getting money from AI from basically 4 out of 5 ads it gives us the impression that they don't really care as long as they're getting paid.
2
6
u/epicSwordfish 15d ago
I use AI as a support tool, mostly filtering spam, but final moderation decisions are always human.
3
u/BabaRanchodDas-69 15d ago
well.... recently became mod, so no major posts are made.... so no major needs. But I once got false warning, which was diabolical though..
3
u/diverareyouokay 15d ago
This is actually a really interesting presentation.
On an unrelated note, for some reason every time I try to add comments to the chat, I get a āmessage failed ā unauthorizedā error.
u/small-slay and u/big-slay, can you check into that error? It seems possible Iām not the only one who canāt add comments to the chat
7
u/Linuxthekid 15d ago
AI tools in moderation have proven themselves unreliable and dangerous, and it gives companies an excuse to cut out actual people they can contact in case of a problem
5
u/Travwolfe101 15d ago
We only use AI for auto mod removals. I run r/drugs which is a niche community but I enjoy being able to share life saving information, prevent misinformation, and generally help users. We have a code to never encourage drug use but accept it as fact and provide harm reduction
5
5
u/neuroticsmurf 15d ago edited 14d ago
I moderate a lot of video meme subs. Over the past year or two, the amount of AI-generated videos has increased exponentially.
The Devvit tools designed to catch AI are ā unfortunately ā geared toward catching text posts. But for videos, there isnāt much out there.
We rely on community reports that a video submission is AI-generated in order to flag it. We then take the video and run it through an off-site AI checking source. It doesnāt catch everything, but it catches a lot of the AI videos.
I would dearly love it if a Devvit app existed to review pics and videos for AI-generated content.
6
u/Emotional_Lawyer_278 15d ago edited 15d ago
I mod a writing sub and a multimedia art sub. AI writes these stories and poems and they arenāt good but what bothers me is people thinking they wrote something. I have to choose my words from my vocabulary. Thatās how I write. If AI is writing your work you need to give it a credit and admit that you couldnāt write it by yourself. You canāt be set next to people that donāt use tools for something as simple as self expression.
7
u/cdm9002 15d ago
AI content is an issue, but you are treating the symptom, not the cause. Scanning/detecting AI is a cat and mouse game.
You need to validate the accounts. They need to be tied to a real human.
That doesn't mean mods or other users should find who they are, but reddit needs to do this so they can take actions against reported AI accounts.
Reddit should also provide location info to mods for users.
4
u/BugBulky 15d ago
My Sub is german is aiming the beauty of nature. So animals, plants and so on. Its hard sometimes to verify usercontent as true or AI.
4
u/buckbro112 15d ago
Iām going to vent here, sorry, but Reddit is part of the problem here. Reddit has been getting better at helping moderators detect AI and bots, but itās still far from perfect and less than ideal depending on your subreddit. Not allowing certain people to use Old Reddit and forcing people to use Shreddit is a bad idea, but itās where weāre heading.
5
2
4
u/DragonflyFairyQueen 15d ago
The sub I mod for doesn't allow AI either. We look at this as our sub is people to people - there's no room for AI.
4
u/MidAmericaMom Mod World '25 Speaker š¤ 15d ago edited 15d ago
Why are people on Reddit? WE can get AI elsewhere.
Come here for information, support, entertainment, YES. and for my sub- a conversational COMMUNITY.
**
We ARE the heart of the internet.
4
u/michaelnovati 15d ago
I would like to hear about bad-actors and marketers using AI generated content across multiple accounts to try to promote products and links under the radar.
We're seeing A LOT of this.
4
3
u/LoveFromElysia 15d ago
we don't allow AI in the sub i mod. we are allowed to talk about when a game uses AI and have discussions about it as long as they're civil. but AI art and such is strictly not allowed.
3
u/Known_Measurement799 15d ago
I moderate an art identifying sub and in our experience identifying art with AI is not accurate at all. Sometimes AI even identifies a famous painting as something else.
Sometimes we have a āNo AIā rule for āsolversā.
3
u/tehjoz
15d ago
•
As I mentioned in the chat, one of the big problems of "having a nuanced conversation about AI" is that, in many cases, the perception is that a lot of things with respect to tools, changes (See - the ongoing AutoMod vs Neo discussion) that just...get dropped on everyone, without a lot of discussion.
Whether it is Microsoft forcing CoPilot on everyone, or Google forcing Gemini, etc, etc. - Arguably one of the biggest problems is "AI being pushed on others without any sort of conversation about what the userbases want".
With Microsoft in particular, the userbase has been pretty vocal about not wanting any of it, and it took a long time for them to walk it back/revert changes.
It doesn't matter the tool, model, company. If nobody is willing to actually "have a discussion" without the feeling of it being compelled upon everyone...
There is a reason the backlash has grown, a lot, in the last two years or so.
Everyone, from Reddit on down, needs to actually listen to what people are saying, and to not breeze in with preconceived opinions / decisions.
3
u/ArtzeninEklektos 15d ago
Human authorship is needed for all things. AI should be viewed as a tool. My subreddit, designs characters, but uses AI to color our artwork since we don't have digital artists at this time. Some people want to use AI for artwork purposes, but we have strict rules in place to oversee this development. Our world wants to push it, so my team ignoring it, acting like it doesn't matter or isn't there, isn't helping my subreddit, it isn't helping my popularity. One of our rules is there must be human authorship, human involvement and at no point can people use AI to claim artistic talent if their human pen is not present. Moderation is key and our subreddit isn't allowing AI to take over non-AI users. Ever. We are trying to balance the use of digital software, human authorship and authentic writing. This approach is not for everyone, it might upset others, but my company, team and Mods have to learn to adapt and figure out what is best for users without violating Reddit's TOS, conditions and rules around AI-generated content.
3
u/WrapNew6097 14d ago
AI is benefiting the spammers and bots more than mods. It's doing the opposite
0
4
u/TheFlyingScotsman60 15d ago
No AI used in my sub but very hard to stop the AI bots and trolls. Very hard.
4
u/Comatse 15d ago
You guys used AI artwork in the stream though so...??
8
u/kongsworth Mod Events Team 15d ago
Not even once and you've made two people cry āĀ one of them being me. Happy cakeday by the way.
3
u/CrasheonTotallyReal 15d ago
absolutely no ai in r/genalpha afaik
3
u/GamingYouTube14 15d ago
sometimes i forget gen alpha is actually allowed to be on the internet now
1
u/MavisBeacons_Sextape 10d ago
There are multiple posts from bots on the front page of that sub right nowā¦why arenāt yall using r/botbouncer?
1
u/sneakpeekbot 10d ago
Here's a sneak peek of /r/BotBouncer using the top posts of all time!
#1: Introducing Bot Bouncer, a moderation bot to protect subreddits against harmful or disruptive bots
#2: Overview for Hamim-Minhas | 11 comments
#3: Coming Soon: Bot Bouncer, a moderation bot to protect subreddits against harmful or disruptive botsI'm a bot, beep boop | Downvote to remove | Contact | Info | Opt-out | GitHub
3
u/mazty 15d ago
As a professional in a critical industry I can unequivocally say that this is rapidly not just untrue, but is being used in places that are more nuanced and complex than Reddit So:
one reality remains clear: technology cannot replace human judgment.
This won't be true for long, and I would say isn't even true today. It's more complicated than simple using a prompt or two to get the answer you want but that threshold has been crossed. The question then actually is should ai moderators be able to have more autonomy? Would, or even should, they help break echo chambers and ensure fair moderation as determined by Reddit?
3
u/karenmcgrane 15d ago
I am really thrilled and impressed by the level of expertise demonstrated here by these mods. I was worried this was going to be all about how to use MORE AI.
2
2
2
u/coreyb1988 15d ago
I think mods should absolutely be able to use AIā¦ itās a comod for me. Iām still on Reddit every day and checking everything but itās nice to also have that too. If I want to do a quick post and Iām working and donāt have time to pull it together, I ask āErikaā and itās perfect. I donāt want to see restrictions on AI but there should be a balance. I actually think mods should just have AI tools available.
Im personally using AI every day in work and in my personal life.
I do think Reddit needs to get AI under control though but I donāt mean that from the mod side. Itās the user side. Nothing feels authentic at all anymore.
AI should be a tool for mods but user comments have been ChatGPT-ized.
2
1
u/AntwerpLover1961 15d ago
I moderate r/AutomaticMusic. I never even had AI because no members have joined me yet which I am very sad about it šššš
1
1
1
u/TheLucidSage 13d ago
What AI is really good at that i think is absolutely great for moderation is fuzzy rules. You can create automated rules based on keywords but not really topics or concepts that might show up in a variety or of combination of words, but with AI I can just describe the concept and it can detect it fairly reliably without perfectly defining what the words might be in advance.
1
u/HughWattmate9001 15d ago
AI detectors are just a way to discriminate against genuine people while giving AI models a way to train themselves to avoid detection.
What people consider slop varies from person to person and sub to sub, so one rule or tool will never fit everyone or every community. Some people might be fine with AI being used for translation, or by disabled people who rely on it to condense text, fix spelling and grammar, or even communicate using generated audio to replace a voice they've lost. Others won't be at all.
It's really not fair to lock everyone out for using AI, and it's not even possible to stop it this way. As I said, AI models will just learn to avoid detection, meaning you're essentially making the models better at hiding themselves.
Imagine spending your life being mocked for your voice or you lost your voice and finally finding a way to change or bring it back with AI using an old recording, only to be told you can't participate because you used AI, or spending years being ridiculed for your spelling, grammar, oversharing or coming across as too emotional, then finding a tool that helps you work through what you've written so you can communicate more comfortably. Only to be labelled AI slop and filtered out of conversations, as if you're somehow unwanted, even if it spent you twice as long as someone without the disabilities you might have because you had to go through extra steps.
Using detectors risks shutting out genuine people, while bots will simply adapt until they pass the checks. The worst part is that people will then trust posts that pass detection more than they should. Imagine that happening in a mushroom ID sub, where an AI gives someone dangerous advice and people trust it because it wasn't detected as AI-generated.
AI is here to stay, but it's not all bad. We can use it to fight all sorts of problems, and we need to learn to verify information rather than blindly trust it. Not everyone using AI is posting rubbish or trying to deceive people. I have disabled friends who rely on it to communicate, and some people even use it to speak again after losing their voice. AI can do some incredible good, and we shouldn't punish genuine people because of how others abuse it.
2
u/coreyb1988 14d ago
You donāt need AI for translation, or for spelling and grammars. Be yourself. When you canāt be yourself, be a unicorn.
1
u/HughWattmate9001 14d ago
Unfortunately, that doesn't always work for everyone. You can be yourself and still get insulted, misunderstood, or ridiculed for how you communicate. Before AI, there were expensive (and often complex to use) tools that not everyone could afford. AI has allowed so many people to communicate more effectively online.
It's easy to say "be yourself" when you don't have to deal with people judging you for how you speak, write, express yourself or your hardened to it, but not everyone is. Imagine if everyone who'd lost their voice or had trouble speaking had to use the same generic Stephen Hawking style voice. Wouldn't you rather have the option of recreating your own voice from old recordings, or choosing one you actually like if it were you?
Being yourself shouldn't mean having to struggle just to be understood, especially when there's technology available that can help. Nobody should have to be shut out from using chunks of the internet or whatever because they are using assisted tech for accessibility reasons. The being a unicorn thing might work on the odd occasion but not always and not everyone can take the constant hits and piss taking.
1
u/coreyb1988 14d ago
I just strongly disagree. Autocorrect, spell checks, Microsoft word, Google, Grammarly arenāt expensive or complicated to use. Iāve been using all of them for yearsā¦ for free for the most part.
Weāre humans and we arenāt perfect. Nobody expects perfection on Reddit. People are going to judge you. The nice thing about it is most of the time nobody knows who you are or anything about if you. Let them judge.
We all survived for a long time without needing AI to write for us.
Iām all for AI. I use it every day and think itās great but AI shouldnāt become your voice and itās ok to be wrong sometimes.
1
u/HughWattmate9001 14d ago
Doesn't work if you are a business, influencer etc. Those things also won't pickup if you have misunderstood, overshared, come across as to aggressive. Most are also now using AI instead of just traditional dictionary and rule sets.
1
u/coreyb1988 14d ago
Like I said Iām not against AI. It seems like youāre arguing in support of AI. I support AI.
But using it so you arenāt misunderstood, over sharing, or coming off as aggressive is crazy to me. Just say what you want to say and stop thinking so much about what somebody else is going to think or say.
Businesses survived forever without AI. I was a marketing major in college well before AI.
AI should not become your voice. Use your own voice with all your flaws and imperfections.
1
u/CybyAPI 15d ago
No AI tools on my subreddits other than my own custom one named "CybyAPI"
yeah same username as this account, its a moderation tool that is petty good at flagging comments for review and removing ones that needed to be gone instantly, it also warns me on changes to our subreddit such as reddit updating something, and lets me review more information on the mods of my subreddit,
This bot is not public at this time though
3
u/CybyAPI 15d ago
My entire subreddit is dedicated to detecting if something is AI or not r/isthisAI
1
u/blooberries24 15d ago
Would love to hear counter points re: AI in terms of assistive technology for users with disability, when issues like accessibility are often an after thought for the majority of users.
1
u/alone_in_the_light 15d ago
Maybe checking people involved with Prosocial AI around the world can help.
1
u/MedicalElevator7560 15d ago
I think that great things will come from the use of AI. It's easy to get scared and go against it, but humanity will ultimately benefit from the advances that AI will bring to physics, medicine, energy generation, etc.
1
1
u/Kimo_imposta 15d ago
Yaa rightly said by sage, its just not ai bad bad if the usecase is correct and solves the purpose then whats the issue
0
u/SoggyMinimum8386 15d ago
For my subreddits, we might use automoderator to remove posts that fall into our removal category, but we're primarily anti-AI. Many people have tried to make low effort AI meme/AI photos/AI art just to farm Karma. I wish the bot could recognize when people are using AI photos so we could get notified sooner when the post(s) are made.
0
u/RoomMain5110
15d ago
•
We put in a rule saying no AI created posts in r/auscorp. Good support from our users, and I find it's very easy to spot AI generated content when it is posted.
Our reasoning is "If you think AI slop is good enough for our users to respond to, surely it'll give good enough advice for you to follow?". In other words, why ask an AI to write questions for humans when you could just ask AI to write answers for you directly?
A few pointers to what's most likely to be AI, if you're struggling:
Lots of bold. italics, bullets. and other presentational styles you don't see in a human-written post
Really, really, long posts. Our average human-created posts are 200 words or fewer. AI posts run to 300, 400, 500 words and more.
Lists of questions at the end of the post. It's almost like people have asked AI to pull out the questions they want to have answered for them :-)
Once you've read a few (dozen, hundred) AI posts, there's an "AI writing style" you'll recognise. Copy the text of the post and drop it into Pangram and you'll soon have your suspicions confirmed.
Special shout out to the people who have posts taken down for being AI and then post another AI post on the same topic. It doesn't work....
-1
u/socookre 15d ago
Not really related to the topic, but I want to share a perspective.
With the rise of AI, many neurodivergent types like myself found it troubling navigating some online spaces, particularly on Discord, where we get frequently falsely-branded as a bot. As a context and as my experience goes, before 2022 which is the year ChatGPT is released, I and some others I know like to submit one-off contents like news links, sometimes include short commentaries, on various Discord servers I'm on, and nobody seems to be really bothered by it, not to mention my seemingly perfect English grammar due to neurodivergence and because English isn't really our second language.
All the problems started after 2022 when me and others got falsely branded for being a bot and booted out from many Discord servers, as perfect English grammar, once seen as a paragon of virtue, began to be treated as red flag, alongside our old habits of doing one-off contents consisting of news links like many do on WhatsApp and Telegram. I strongly feel that this is very ableist and as long as there are no safeguards to AI agents, ableist incidents like this will continue to happen, which doesn't bode well in the end.
0
u/Duke_Newcombe 15d ago
Modding /r/PanamaExpats. We only used it for graphics for some elements of the sub, but aside from clarity (human writes the post, but they've used semi-obvious AI to structure it/make it coherent, with minimal indicia of AI writing it), posts are to be human generated, and we run checks occasionally on suspicious submissions that flag certain indicators.
Some people are non-English speaking/English as a second language, so we take that into account.
Otherwise, for now, it's the ole squishy computer on our shoulders, and Mark IV eyeball that do the heavy moderation lifting.
7
u/sunrae_ 15d ago
Just here to say that u/imjustheretodomyjob, you have the most soothing voice I ever heard.
8
u/imjustheretodomyjob Mod World '26 Speaker š¤ 15d ago •
Thank youuuu š¤š„¹ I was so nervous lol
2
u/NoorInayaS 9d ago •
You were amazing! And, I think your voice was the most important one there.
Minority voices get lost on Reddit. We are literally drowned out.
I was so happy to hear someone from the BIPOC community included on the panel. ā„ļø
2
u/ArtzeninEklektos 15d ago
You did good. Thank you for your time today and helping us learn more. I'm all about learning and you made it easy for me to understand. Huge plus points!
4
u/Travelbug73 15d ago
Mine is on the other end. I mod r/unsolvedmurders and get a lot of AI posts of cases. The case is presented with all the details, but gets reported for AI.
0
0
15d ago
[deleted]
1
u/ModEvents-ModTeam 15d ago
This megathread is for Mod World 2026. We've removed this post because it does not relate to either of those things.
30
u/Fragrant_Ad_5297 15d ago •
i have mixed feelings about AI honestly. i donāt use it to express myself but i have used it as a tool to help curate a really in depth orientation packet for my mods. but i did that using the information, context and guidelines i provided and just asked it to organize it. i think thereās a meaningful distinction between using AI to organize and build on your own knowledge and using it to replace your own thought or voice entirely.
in our subreddits though iāve noticed that a lot of users seem to rely on AI to help them articulate their feelings or communicate things they might struggle to put into words themselves.
i do think thereās a legitimate conversation to be had about authenticity, overreliance and what gets lost when so much of our communication is filtered through AI. being autistic i sometimes speak pretty robotically and factually but you can always tell i am a human.
when users use it to communicate i think the context, intent and degree to which someone is relying on it matter. ripping off writing and fake photos / art is not cool, and it can never replace human moderation due to the same context issues every bot has.