It’s easier than ever for bad actors to spew spam across the internet as powerful large language models (LLMs) become effortlessly accessible. If you’ve spent about 10 minutes on the internet in the last few years, you will know that this means spam and bot content have become an even bigger problem than they already were.

Reddit says it developed tools with LLMs to cut down on spam, much of which was created with LLMs in the first place. It’s a bit ironic, but in the AI era, platforms have no choice but to fight fire with fire. According to the platform, Reddit blocks 23 million spam views per day and catches about 25,000 new spam posts and comments each day.

Social platforms have been building automated spam reduction tools for years, but Reddit says these updated tools are catching spam at a higher rate.

“We leverage LLMs to catch the highly subtle, coordinated patterns of fake behavior and artificial hype that older systems once missed,” a Reddit blog post says. The company claims it reduced users’ exposure to spam by 20% from January to March compared with the prior three months.

Platforms like YouTube, Meta, and Instagram allow users to post AI-generated content so long as they disclose it, and TikTok is going as far as letting users toggle how much AI-generated content they want to see.

If platforms are able to detect AI-generated content faster, that also means that they have the potential to flag violative content like hate speech more quickly. But platform experts have continually reminded us that AI content moderation must be paired with human moderation to get the most effective results.