Stack Overflow Strives To Survive In Era Of AI |
Written by Sue Gee | |||
Wednesday, 11 June 2025 | |||
Stack Overflow was an early victim of generative AI with developers deserting it in droves, preferring to ask ChatGPT for help instead. Now Stack Overflow has a new strategy of integration with AI and monetizing "Knowledge as a Service". StackOverflow and generative AI have been at loggerheads since the public release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Not only did the number of questions and answers decline dramatically, Stack Overflow's moderators explicitly banned the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI to create posts (including answers) on the site. The rationale was that the high rate of incorrect yet plausible-sounding answers was "substantially harmful" and was overwhelming their volunteer-based moderation system. This led to users being suspended for posting AI-generated content and to moderators striking largely as a protest against Stack Overflow management's perceived undermining of moderator authority and their handling of AI-generated content policies. Since then Stack Overflow's strategy has significantly shifted. Rather than continuing to fight AI, the company has chosen to embrace AI to monetize its vast and valuable dataset.
Stack Overflow announced OverflowAI, as something that would make finding answers on Stack Overflow faster and more efficient, in July 2023. It entered Alpha testing in September 2023 and became generally available in May 2024. Insofar as the aim was to halt the decline in traffic it has not been a success as the volume of questions and answers continues to decrease to levels seen around its 2009 launch. At the same time as Overflow AI was announced so was the Stack Overflow for VS Code Extension, which entered Alpha testing in August 2023 and became generally available in May 2024. It can be considered as the first implementation of Stack Overflow's "Knowledge-as-a-Service Model" a primary goal of which is to delivering Stack Overflow's knowledge directly to the developer. By being able to access Stack Overflow's knowledge base from within the IDE reduces the need to context-switch, i.e. leave the coding environment and search on the web, and enables developers to maintaining their "flow state". Moreover, Overflow AI is enabling Stack Overflow to monetize its valuable dataset. From late 2023 behind the scenes, it began formalizing its "Knowledge Solutions" product - packaging its high-quality data (questions, answers, comments, tags, votes, and metadata) in a structured and easily consumable format specifically for AI model training and grounding. The emphasis was on providing ethical and responsible, human-validated data use with proper attribution. As a first step towards monetization of its data, in February 2024 announced a partnership with Google Cloud such that Gemini for Google Cloud would provide developers with suggestions, code, and answers from Stack Overflow, utilizing OverflowAPI. In addition, developers using Gemini for Google Cloud were able to access Stack Overflow directly from the Google Cloud console, enabling them to ask questions and get answers from the Stack Overflow community. A milestone in terms of monetization came in May 2024 when Stack Overflow announced a partnership with OpenAI, allowing OpenAI to use Overflow AI, the API for Knowledge Solutions, to train and improve its LLMs, It also committed OpenAI to surfacing validated Stack Overflow knowledge directly into ChatGPT, a direct monetization of the dataset through a licensing agreement. Stack Overflow's partnership with Open AI also led to the Stack Overflow Extension for GitHub Copilot. On June 9, 2025 Stack Overflow announced a new partnership with Databricks, the data and AI company, through the addition of its Knowledge Solutions datasets to the Databricks Marketplace. According to the press release: Supported by Delta Sharing, this integration gives customers direct access to the world’s most comprehensive and trusted source of technical knowledge and code verified by the millions of developers that have contributed to the Stack Overflow platform and Stack Exchange Network. This is the third such partnership announced this year, the previous ones being with the Snowflake Marketplace and the Moveworks AI Agent Marketplace and in all cases Stack Overflow highlights that the integration provides a: seamless and comprehensive experience for individuals seeking to learn, solve problems, and implement solutions in the modern data and AI space. Understandably, such "sharing" or rather "selling" of community originated data has alienated a substantial proportion of Stack Overflow's core user base. Now the "loggerheads" dynamic has largely shifted from Stack Overflow versus AI to Stack Overflow versus its community over its AI strategy.
More InformationRelated ArticleStack Overflow Traffic Slumps As Devs Turn to ChatGPT Stack Overflow Moderators Take Strike Action Stack Overflow On Google Cloud OpenAI Enriched By Stack Overflow To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, sign up for our weekly newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feed and follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 11 June 2025 ) |