X, previously known as Twitter, has integrated Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to enhance its Explore section by offering personalized trending story summaries. As revealed by the X Engineering team through an announcement and shared screenshots, X’s Premium subscribers now have access to concise summaries of posts related to each trending story showcased in the For You tab of Explore.
👀 Now available: Stories on X, powered by Grok AI 👀
See what the world is talking about with Stories on X, curated by @grok. now available for Premium subscribers in the Explore tab!
web & iOS only for now– let us know your feedback pic.twitter.com/Iv6zk9WugU
— Engineering (@XEng) May 3, 2024
The For You page on X features popular news and stories circulating within users’ networks, alongside suggested content, serving as a convenient hub for users to stay updated without extensive scrolling. For example, a TechCrunch reader’s For You page might include topics like Apple’s upcoming iPad event, Microsoft’s security updates, and AI engineer burnout. Now, when users tap on these stories, a Grok-powered summary provides a brief overview at the top of the page.
For instance, the summary for a story on AI burnout highlights the competitive pressures in the tech industry, emphasizing the need for safeguards and thoughtful innovation. Beneath each summary, a playful reminder advises users to verify Grok’s outputs due to potential errors
While summarizing trends isn’t novel, X’s approach with Grok marks a significant shift. Previously, Twitter introduced trend annotations in 2020, but without AI assistance, resulting in inconsistent coverage. With Grok’s Stories, all top news on the For You page is succinctly summarized.
Access to xAI’s chatbot Grok is a key incentive for premium subscriptions, offering real-time insights into X data. Elon Musk’s vision for AI-powered news on X, as outlined by tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz, emphasizes conversations as the core of Grok’s summaries. However, some concerns arise regarding Grok’s reliance on user discussions rather than article text, potentially skewing the portrayal of shared news.
New: @elonmusk emailed me about his plan for AI news on X.
The idea is to use AI to blend breaking news and commentary, building real-time summaries of events. Then you can go deeper via chat on Grok.
Here's the full story! I'll be talking more about this on Big Technology…
— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) May 3, 2024
Journalists are encountering AI-generated news summaries across various platforms, including startups like Arc and Particle, founded by former Twitter engineers. The impact on news site traffic remains uncertain. Kantrowitz suggests that users may delve deeper into source material after reading AI summaries, yet declining page views could lead to the closure of some news outlets, reducing content available for AI summarization.
To adapt, news publishers are forming partnerships with AI providers, such as OpenAI’s collaboration with the FT. Axel Springer, AP, and Le Monde have also pursued similar initiatives. Unlike some platforms, X leverages user conversations to access news content directly, bypassing the need for content partnerships. While innovative, this approach raises concerns about misinformation.
Grok’s Stories are now available to Premium X subscribers, with Premium access starting at $8 per month through the web.