In a tweet posted on Saturday, Elon Musk announced that social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) will release its new algorithm to the public seven days later, including the code that will be used to determine what posts and advertisements will be suggested to users.
In a post on X, Musk wrote that “This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed.”
He did not specify a reason as to why X was releasing its algorithm under the open-source license. He and the company have come into conflict with the regulators multiple times regarding what is being presented to the users.
It was also alleged that some X users had been getting fewer posts on the social media platform from people they followed in the past. Musk confirmed in a post on October that the company had found a “significant bug” in the platform’s “For You” algorithm and pledged a fix.
Another effort of the company has been integrating additional artificial intelligence in its X recommendation algorithm with the aid of Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot created by Musk.
In the last couple of years, Musk has committed to releasing some of the algorithms of X, but follow-up has been inconsistent. Musk explained in September that the recommendation engine of X to “be purely AI” and the company would release its open-source algorithm about every two weeks.
Musk wrote in October that “To the degree that people are seeing improvements in their feed, it is not due to the actions of specific individuals changing heuristics, but rather increasing use of Grok and other AI tools.”
Musk wrote on a post that the company was striving to get all of the over 100 million daily posts published to X rated by Grok, which would then give individual users the posts that they were most likely to be interested in.
He stated, “This will profoundly improve the quality of your feed.” He also stated that the company was scheduled to implement the new features in November.
The Grok’s image-generation capabilities have faced criticism from global regulators over a recent flood of AI-generated images that sexualize women and children on X.
Grok informed users on X on Friday that they would require a paid subscription to create and edit images. Those features were first offered on X with daily limits at no charge.
Indonesia blocked access to the AI system Grok following an inquiry into the production of sexual content by the system. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer demanded Musk’s X urgently “get their act together” over the sexualized images this week.
The Technology Secretary Liz Kendall warned on Friday that without their compliance with the UK law, the government could block services being accessed in the UK.
European regulators have especially increased the pressure on the company in regard to misinformation, insufficient content control, and weak transparency.
The French government requested in July that the company release its algorithm as an investigation into the claims of prejudice and manipulation. It was responding to the request at that time by stating it was not obligated to comply and that the investigation was political in nature.
