Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has introduced a default setting that allows user posts and interactions to be used for training and fine-tuning its A.I. chatbot, Grok. The setting, which can be opted out of, captures content automatically for Grok’s development. X users have the ability to control whether their public posts can be utilized to train the AI search assistant. The setting is currently available on the web platform and will soon be rolled out on mobile.
Grok, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is an AI chatbot developed by xAI, a startup owned by Musk. The premium subscribers on X were introduced to Grok last fall. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 was driven by his dissatisfaction with Twitter’s content moderation and policies at the time. Since then, he has implemented staff reductions and introduced various monetization plans, including a premium subscription tier.
While Musk has expressed optimism about AI’s role in his business empire, which includes SpaceX, he also signed an open letter in 2023, along with notable figures like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta, and Microsoft. The letter called for a six-month pause on the development of AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4, highlighting the risks associated with advanced AI technology.