X, formerly Twitter, is now using Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok to power its ability to summarize personalized trending stories in the app's Explore section.according to announcement Screenshots posted by the X engineering team on Friday, and X premium subscribers can view the[For You]You can read a summary of posts about X related to each trending story featured in the tab.
đź‘€ Now Available: Story of X Powered by Grok AI đź‘€
See what's being talked about around the world with Stories on X, curated by. @grok. Now available to Premium subscribers in the Explore tab.
Web and iOS only for now – give us your feedback pic.twitter.com/Iv6zk9WugU
— Engineering (@XEng) May 3, 2024
The For You page displays news and articles shared across the network's popular X platforms, along with other recommended items. This is one of the first stops for X users who want to keep up with what's being said on the platform without spending long hours scrolling through timelines.
For example, today's For You page for TechCrunch readers might feature articles about Apple's upcoming iPad event, Microsoft's security overhaul, and AI engineer burnout. When you tap on each story to see his related X posts, you'll see a summary of the story at the top of the page, giving you an overview of the subject matter.
For example, for a story about AI burnout, a Grok-powered summary might start like this: “AI engineers are facing burnout and rushed deployments due to competition in the technology industry as companies prioritize satisfying investors over solving real problems.” This article reads: After briefly touching on the issue of the AI ​​”rat race,” critics argue that appropriate safeguards and thoughtful innovation should not be put on the back burner when pursuing AI investments. There is…” he concludes.
Humorously, a message appears below its summary warning: “Grok can make mistakes. Please check its output.”
The idea of ​​summarizing trends is not new, but the way summaries are handled is. In his 2020, under previous leadership, Twitter began adding headlines and descriptions to trends without the help of AI bots. Instead, Twitter itself annotates some of the daily trends with additional information and pins representative tweets to provide further context. However, developments on Twitter were haphazard, with some trends getting coverage and others not.
Grok's Stories summarizes all the top news from the For You page, called summaries.
Access to xAI's chatbot Grok is intended to be a selling point to encourage users to purchase a premium subscription. On the Premium and top-tier Her Premium+ plans, users can access Her Grok by tapping a button at the bottom center of the app. Grok, an insidious and “rebellious” AI, differs from other AI chatbots such as ChatGPT by its exclusive and real-time access to X-data.
a Post published Friday to X by technology journalist Alex Kantrowitz explains Elon Musk's further plans for AI-powered news about X, based on email conversations with X owners.
Kantrowitz says conversations about X will be central to Grok's summary. Grok doesn't look at the text of the article, even if it's what people are discussing on the platform. This can be problematic when it comes to painting a true picture of the news being shared. Because what people are talking about on X may not be the news itself, but their reactions and opinions. Kantrowitz called the move “controversial,” but acknowledged the opportunity.
new: @Eron Musk They emailed me about their plans for AI news about X.
The idea is to use AI to blend breaking news and commentary to build a real-time overview of events. You can then dig deeper through Grok's chat.
This is the full text! More on this in Big Tech.
— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) May 3, 2024
Journalists already have to contend with AI news coverage in other areas, including startups. For example, Arc's new web browser includes his AI summary feature, and the former Twitter engineer is building an AI news summary service called Particle. What this will do in terms of traffic to the news sites themselves remains to be seen. Kantrowitz wrote that he thinks users may be interested in “reading deeper into the source material once their curiosity is piqued.” But AI summarization will likely lead to fewer page views and, in the long run, fewer sources for AI bots like Grok to summarize, likely putting at least some news sites out of business.
That's why some news publishers are signing deals with AI providers, like OpenAI's recently announced partnership with the FT. Axel Springer, Associated Press, Le Monde and other newspapers have also announced similar moves. For X, you don't need to be affiliated to access the news content itself, you can access the news through the conversations around you. This is both smart and alarming, the latter in terms of misinformation.
Grok's Stories is currently rolling out to Premium X subscribers.access to premium If you pay on the web instead of in the app store, it starts at $8 per month.