The internet is becoming flooded with AI-generated content, and one of the few places where humans can still go to talk with other humans has been Reddit.
Unfortunately, a new marketing automation startup called Astral wants to change that and bring LinkedIn-tier marketing slop to the discussion board site. The startup’s founder Savannah Feder published a video on X Thursday demonstrating how using AI agents in a browser window, her tool can navigate through Reddit and automatically write comments promoting whatever it is a marketer might be trying to sell.
Like other computer-use agents recently demoed by the likes of Anthropic and Google, Astral can take over a local browser and complete tasks by first capturing screenshots of a page and analyzing them using AI to figure out what to do next based on a prompt, ultimately sending commands back to the mouse. “Look how Astral finds the right places to click,” Feder says as the bot starts logging into Reddit. “It’s honestly really fascinating to see how it navigates the site just like a human would.” The video goes on to show how the bot navigates to the subreddit /r/productmanagement, searches for posts about “user research,” and then “writes a reply that promotes the product without sounding too sales-y.”
The dream for these bots is that they will help grandma navigate her computer by herself, not create marketing automation spambots that flood social media. Certainly, this has to be why so many people show disdain for AI: It is being deployed by the worst people you know.
Announcing Astral – an AI marketer that works 24/7 to grow your startup.
Astral navigates websites, creates content, and runs marketing across socials.
Watch Astral automate Reddit in real-time: pic.twitter.com/XbpKt0lZqd
— Savannah (@SavannahFeder) January 9, 2025
This should be further evidence that AI is about to create a sea of undifferentiated mediocrity, and bland content as far as the eye can see. Anyone who has spent enough time on LinkedIn or X has seen generic, soulless posts that are obviously written with AI, and now someone has excitedly built a tool to bring this to Reddit. Imagine being proud of this, like being proud of peeing in someone’s pool.
What is perhaps most disheartening is that the people creating tools like Astral genuinely seem to believe AI and humans are interchangeable, and that machine will be far better than human can ever be.
Incredibly, after someone asked Feder why Astral uses an AI agent running in a local browser rather than a Reddit API, she explains that is because Reddit and other social media sites restrict using their APIs for automated tasks. There is a reason for that: Because it is spammy and annoying. She even excitedly explains to another person that the bot can 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 will be interesting to see how platforms like Reddit implement anti-bot measures to combat the slop.
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2025-01-10 20:10:43
