'Reddit Answers' AI Recommends Heroin and High-Dose Kratom for Pain

In October 2025, moderators of r/FamilyMedicine discovered that Reddit's AI-powered 'Reddit Answers' feature was auto-generating responses to health questions that surfaced and seemingly endorsed dangerous practices. In one case the feature pointed users toward posts claiming heroin had controlled someone's chronic pain; in another it linked to posts urging people to stop prescribed medications and take high-dose kratom, an unregulated substance that is illegal in some states. Because the answers appeared inside the subreddit's interface, they risked being mistaken for community or moderator endorsement.

Moderators were alarmed that they had no ability to disable the feature for medical and mental-health communities, where AI-surfaced misinformation carries acute real-world risk. The r/FamilyMedicine moderators posted a public warning: 'We do NOT and CANNOT endorse Reddit Answers at this time and urge every user of this sub to disregard anything it says,' and demanded Reddit either turn the feature off for health communities or provide an opt-out, warning that 'if this continues, people will be harmed.'

A Reddit admin acknowledged the concerns and said the company had 'made some changes to where Answers appears' based on feedback and would continue to adjust, but the response was widely criticized as minimal given that moderators still could not control the tool inside their own communities. The episode became a flashpoint in the broader debate over platforms bolting generative-AI features onto user-generated content without adequate guardrails for high-stakes domains.