Reddit disappeared from ChatGPT. Or did it?

Hi everyone,

We’re back from Singapore with a SABRE Award for Best New Agency in Asia-Pacific, which still feels slightly surreal. LEOPRD launched as a one-woman operation in April 2025, so winning a category with more than 90 entries was a pretty epic moment for our now-global team of seven. It was a brilliant reminder of why AI visibility has become one of the most exciting frontiers in communications, and we’re massively grateful for all the support we’ve had so far.

As always, the world of AI and comms continues to move fast. In the past two weeks, Reddit seemingly disappeared from ChatGPT citations (more on that below). John Lewis launched a YouTube chat show partly for AI. Claude’s writing is getting an invisible watermark. And AI agents are moving from answering questions to making decisions on our behalf. 

Read on to find out what’s changed, why it matters and what we think brands should do about it.

Celia and the LEOPRD team

P.S. We’re putting the finishing touches on our 2026 LEO Insights Report, revealing what’s shaping AI recommendations now, what’s changed and what brands should do next – join the waitlist to get it first.

THE BIG STORY

ChatGPT stopped citing Reddit. It didn’t stop reading it.

• In late-August, Reddit’s share of ChatGPT Search citations fell by around 86%, dropping from approximately 3.8% to 0.5% in the space of a few days. 

• Yet, new analysis from Trackerly found that while Reddit largely vanished from the citations shown to users, ChatGPT continued retrieving and reading Reddit threads. During the decline, Reddit still accounted for roughly a quarter of the webpages ChatGPT consulted when researching answers. 

• That distinction matters, because most AI visibility reporting focuses on what gets cited. Citations are tangible, measurable and easy to put on a dashboard, but they aren’t a complete record of everything shaping an answer. A review, discussion thread, media article or social post may affect how an AI system understands your brand or category without ever appearing in the final list of sources.

Our read: don’t treat citation share as a complete measure of influence, or build your entire GEO strategy around whichever platform is being cited most this month. The safer strategy is to build consistent, credible signals across earned media, owned content, expert commentary, reviews and the communities where people genuinely discuss your category.

THREE THINGS WORTH KNOWING

1. John Lewis is making content for customers, culture and AI

• John Lewis is launching Gift List, a six-part YouTube ‘vodcast’ chat show hosted by Angela Scanlon, alongside a new social media studio at its Oxford Street store. The interesting part isn’t another retailer making a vodcast. It’s why.

• John Lewis has connected the investment to improving its visibility in chatbot recommendations and AI search. The proportion of its customers using AI to search for products reportedly rose from 0.3% to 2.5% in a year.

• This is a big change in how brands think about content. A show can entertain customers, generate media coverage, produce expert and celebrity commentary, create dozens of searchable social clips and give AI systems fresh material through which to understand the brand. 

What it means: Don’t rush out and start a podcast. Instead, rethink what each piece of content can do and how far it can travel. Build formats around the questions and topics customers actually explore. Turn one production into video, social clips, transcripts, articles and media opportunities. And most importantly, measure more than views. Look at search visibility, media pickup, AI citations and whether the content changes how your brand is described.

2. Claude’s writing will carry an invisible watermark

• Anthropic is introducing watermarks into text generated by future Claude models as AI companies prepare to comply with the EU AI Act.

• There are no hidden characters or labels for readers to spot. Instead, Claude will make subtle, detectable choices in how it generates language. Anthropic says this won’t have a practical effect on quality, cost or content.

• Crucially, the watermark can indicate that Claude was involved in producing or heavily editing something. It can’t prove who wrote it, who published it or whether the underlying information is true.

What it means: disclosure and authorship are becoming reputation questions, not just legal or technical ones. Marketing, comms and PR teams need an agreed policy covering where AI can be used, when its involvement should be disclosed and who remains accountable for the final output.

3. GPT-6 Astra is evidence that AI is moving from answering to doing

• What if you could ask ChatGPT to find your next job, plan a holiday or choose a product, then let it do most of the legwork for you? That is the promise of GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s new model.

• Instead of just answering a question, it can research options, compare them and carry out parts of a task on your behalf. For marketers, this means more of the customer journey could happen entirely inside AI. Being mentioned won’t be enough.

• An agent needs to understand your offer, find accurate information, trust the evidence around your brand and navigate the next step. A well-known brand could still lose to a competitor that is simply easier for AI to understand and act on.

What it means: start testing whether AI can take a customer from question to action, not just whether your brand appears in the answer. Consider: Is your product, pricing, availability and eligibility information current and consistent? Can AI easily understand how to buy, book, enquire or find a location? Where does the journey break when you test real customer prompts?

FROM THE FIELD

• See you at REMADE? We’re currently analysing thousands of AI shopping responses from the lead-up to Black Friday 2026 and comparing them with our 2025 findings. Celia will reveal what has changed at Mumbrella’s REMADE on 10 September, including which brands are gaining ground, where retailers are still missing out and what they can do now to improve their chances of being recommended this sales season. Going to REMADE? Come and say hello.

• From holidays to Hollywood: We’ve also been busy delivering AI visibility work for ODEON Cinemas Group and TUI, in partnership with The Remarkables.

The recurring lesson we’re seeing? Being known isn’t the same as being recommended. Brands need the right information, authority and third-party signals in place when AI is helping someone decide what to watch, where to travel or what to buy.

DATES + CULTURAL MOMENTS TO WATCH

📱 The algorithm opt-out: Australia is preparing laws that would let users switch off algorithmic social feeds. For marketers, the audience you’ve genuinely built could become more valuable than the reach an algorithm temporarily gives you.

💸 Rates watch, 29 September: The RBA’s next cash-rate decision lands just before its Financial Stability Review on 1 October. Expect household budgets, mortgage pressure and consumer confidence to dominate headlines as brands head into the busiest retail period of the year.

☀️ Longer days, 4 October: Daylight saving begins across NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and the ACT. Think beyond changing the clocks: longer evenings shift how people exercise, commute, dine, socialise and spend.

🧠 World Mental Health Day, 10 October: There’s still time to create something with substance, from original data and qualified voices to genuinely useful support. If it starts and ends with an inspirational LinkedIn tile, perhaps sit this one out.

That’s what’s been on our radar. Plenty to think about, and even more to prepare for.

Wondering how your brand shows up in AI? Hit reply and ask us. We’d love to hear what’s on your mind.