Ohanian Says $1.3 Billion VC Bets on Group Chats as AI Slop Erodes Social Media
Updated
Updated · WIRED · Nov 5
Ohanian Says $1.3 Billion VC Bets on Group Chats as AI Slop Erodes Social Media
1 articles · Updated · WIRED · Nov 5
Summary
Alexis Ohanian said traditional social media apps are "not cool anymore" and predicted a better version of the group chat will become the next major form of user-generated content.
AI is driving that shift, he said, because bots and large language models are flooding the web with "slop" and pushing the internet away from human-first experiences toward systems built for agents.
Reddit sits on both sides of that change: its archive of human conversations has become valuable training data for Google and OpenAI, but the company also warned Google's AI search was cutting referral traffic.
Reddit shares fell 29% last week after that warning, and the platform has since moved to require sign-ins to curb third-party scraping and protect engagement.
Ohanian, who left Reddit's board in 2020 and now runs Seven Seven Six, said the internet needs "provable humanity" while arguing AI could still deliver gains such as medical breakthroughs.