When Elon Musk launched his personal AI startup, xAI, he touted a key benefit over his rivals: entry to the huge trove of knowledge from his newly acquired social media platform Twitter. By implementing new API charges on the community he shortly renamed X, Musk locked out different AI corporations, sustaining unique entry for his personal fashions. And he started utilizing X’s thousands and thousands of customers to check the outcomes.
Musk has been utilizing this distribution channel since xAI launched its first model of the Grok giant language mannequin, including options like trending story summaries and AI-generated questions on posts as properly as releasing the Grok chatbot (initially) to X customers completely. Now, a slew of latest AI options is coming. Per the findings of reverse engineer Nima Owji, the platform seems to be growing AI-powered put up enhancements, together with a characteristic that lets Grok modify your tweets. The chatbot additionally seems to be including location-based queries, letting customers ask about issues close by, like grocery shops.
xAI’s takeover of the platform as soon as referred to as Twitter is so unmistakable that even its branding has crept into X’s most seen actual property, with “xAI Grok” now commanding distinguished placement within the app’s fundamental toolbar — a placing image of how Musk’s AI ambitions have come to dominate the social community. An xAI worker poked enjoyable at their firm’s increasing presence, sharing a picture of X’s timeline overrun with the xAI brand.
xAI and X have maybe the closest and most advanced relationship of all of Musk’s corporations. On paper, all xAI staffers are additionally X staff (however not the opposite approach round); on prime of entry to the code base, they’ve firm laptops from X and seem within the platform’s Workday HR software program as X staff. After X vacated its flagship San Francisco HQ in September, the staffers moved into xAI HQ on the Stanford Analysis Park in Palo Alto. X gives xAI an on the spot pipeline to thousands and thousands of customers — much more environment friendly than constructing Grok’s viewers from scratch. With xAI’s newly acquired Colossus cluster of 100,000 GPUs, deploying AI options throughout X has additionally change into extra technically possible.
Musk has a historical past of making intertwined, interdependent corporations. Tesla and SpaceX share engineering experience, as an example, and after Musk acquired Twitter, Tesla and Boring Firm groups have been a standard sight in its places of work. Proponents of Musk contemplate this a genius strategic benefit. Critics argue that the intricate relationships between his ventures may create conflicts of curiosity, blur the strains of accountability, and expose the businesses to shared vulnerabilities.
On paper, all xAI staffers are additionally X staff (however not the opposite approach round)
The connection between X and xAI is advanced, with various ranges of collaboration between their groups, sources inform The Verge. Whereas Musk holds separate conferences with each X and xAI engineers, the extent of day-to-day cooperation between the businesses stays unclear. For six months, xAI introduced on ex-Meta and Discord product chief Nikita Bier to information AI implementation on X’s platform, together with the addition of AI-generated inquiries to posts — notably, Bier labored completely with xAI, hardly ever participating with X’s workforce. (Earlier than Grok’s launch, X had thought-about constructing its personal generative AI workforce underneath Musk’s cousin James). Some expertise does stream between the businesses — LinkedIn exhibits xAI recruited two X engineers in September.
The funding raised for xAI is separate from what’s raised for X, a setup that highlights their stark distinction in worth. xAI has seen meteoric development, reportedly securing a $50 billion valuation and successfully doubling its price in mere months. In the meantime, X has struggled to take care of worth. Its most up-to-date worker inventory grants in October 2023 valued the corporate at $19 billion, lower than half of Musk’s $44 billion buy value. X staff, who acquired RSUs at $45 per share, have been ready over a yr for brand new inventory grants whereas watching their sister firm’s valuation soar. Throughout xAI’s first funding spherical, Musk mentioned traders in X would own 25 percent of xAI, however that hasn’t materialized for X staff who personal X inventory.
And whereas xAI advantages tremendously from its hyperlink to X, it’s unclear whether or not X customers have benefited a lot from xAI. Not lengthy after X rolled out the Grok-powered Tales characteristic, it started spitting out rubbish: it produced headlines that claimed Vice President Kamala Harris was shot after the tried assassination of Donald Trump; misunderstood a bunch of shitposts about New York Mayor Eric Adams, saying he deployed 50,000 cops to an earthquake; and erroneously claimed in an AI-generated headline “Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles.” (Grok, clearly, isn’t the one AI service with this downside.)
Regardless of the unconventional entangling of the 2 corporations, it’s unlikely that the 2 will absolutely merge anytime quickly. The ideology behind xAI is the acquainted starry-eyed futurism that runs deep within the tech scene: open-source superintelligence, meteoric development, and SpaceX-level dominance in AI (or, at the very least, that’s what Musk pitched at an xAI recruiting celebration a couple of months in the past). It’s precisely the type of audacious moonshot that makes Silicon Valley’s prime expertise and deepest pockets lean ahead of their chairs.
In the meantime, at X, some staffers joke that they’re now not Musk’s favourite youngster. That a lot is obvious within the product. His dream of creating it into an “every thing app” has didn’t materialize, the plans to launch fee options have stalled, advertisers proceed to flee from Musk’s controversies, and upstarts like Bluesky and Threads threaten X’s dominance. The separation retains Silicon Valley’s latest moonshot untethered from the messy actuality of operating a social community.
The platform Musk claims he purchased to guard free speech now appears to serve a distinct goal fully: a personal testing floor for his AI ambitions. It’s an unconventional association. But it surely appears to swimsuit Musk completely.
