Category Archives: X

Elon Musk’s X Gains A New Image Generator, Aurora

X

X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, has added a new image generator to its Grok assistant. However, after going live for a few hours on Saturday, the product seemed to disappear for some users, TechCrunch reported.

Just like the first image generator X added to Grok in October, this one, called Aurora, appears to have a few restrictions.

Accessible through the Grok tab on X’s mobile apps and the web, Aurora can generate images of public and copyrighted figures, like Mickey Mouse, without complaint. The model stopped short of nudes in TechCrunch’s brief tests, but graphic content like “an image of a bloodied Donald Trump,” wasn’t off limits.

Staffers at xAI, Musk’s AI startup, which developed Grok and many of X’s AI powered features, announced Aurora in posts on X early Saturday. But the posts didn’t reveal whether xAI trained Aurora itself, built on top of an existing image generator, or, as was the case with xAI’s first image generator, Flux, collaborated with a third party.

The Verge reported: X has given Grok a new AI generator model called “Aurora” that seems to create far more photorealistic imagery than Grok’s other image generator, with similarly few apparent restrictions on what it will produce.

Anyone can use Aurora. It lives in a new “Grok 2 + Aurora beta” option in the Grok model selector, though you’ll only get a few queries before you hit the X Premium subscription paywall and have to wait.

The Verge noted that TechCrunch found that the model, which X employee Chris Park posted is available this morning, was willing to create copyrighted characters and public figures, including Mickey Mouse and “a bloodied Donald Trump” but that it “stopped short of nudes.” It’s lack of restrictions isn’t surprising, giving our experience with Grok’s other model.

TechRadar reported XAI’s chatbot Grok is now free to chat with on X (formerly Twitter), at least to a limited extent. Grok has been available only to people paying for an X Premium subscription until now, but after a few tests over the last few weeks, the free tier is now rolling out globally.

The free version of Grok employs the Grok-2 AI model, just like the Premium option. It includes a feature for producing images and Grok’s signature “Fun Mode,” which is supposed to make Grok’s responses edgier, more provocative, and wittier than usual.

You can send up to 10 messages to the chatbot every two hours without paying, and you can only ask the AI to make three images a day. That’s enough for a taste, but clearly, X and xAI are hoping it’s enough to entice people into signing up to pay at least $7 a month to engage with the chatbot more.

In my opinion, I think there will be users who want to see what Aurora can do. That said, it doesn’t mean that everyone who uses X (formerly Twitter) will be interested using this new technology.

Inside Elon Musk’s Quest To Beat Open AI At It’s Own Game

Elon Musk, X

Elon Musk spent the past year building his artificial intelligence startup xAI at breakneck speed. Now he has to turn it into a real business, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Musk started xAI last summer in an effort to play catch-up with OpenAI, the ChatGPT developer he co-founded and left in 2018 after a power struggle. He poached talent from across the industry. He pushed contractors to build a massive new data center in a matter of months, a nearly unheard of timeframe for a project of that size.

Now, he is promising the facility in Memphis, Tenn. will help xAI deliver the world’s most powerful AI “by every metric” by December.

Most of xAI’s revenue has come from Musk’s own web of companies. xAI’s main product – its Grok chatbot – is available only to subscribers of his social network X. The startup is powering customer support features for SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service, people with knowledge of the matter said. It is also expected to help create new AI features for X’s search engine, one of the people said.

The startup has discussed deal with Tesla whereby xAI would get some Tesla revenue in exchange for providing the carmaker with access to its technology and resources.

TechCrunch reported Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is reportedly preparing a release a stand-alone consumer app.

The app will likely arrive after xAI closes its next funding round, which could reach $5 billion and value the company $50 billion, per the Financial Times — double its valuation six months ago. Musk is said to have given investors who backed his $44 billion Twitter acquisition 25% (or access up to 25%) of the shares in xAI to reward their loyalty.

According to the FT, some of Musk’s backers — including Fidelity, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey — could be made whole through shares in xAI thanks to the startup’s massive rise in value.

The Verge reported Elon Musk’s xAI could soon make its next move to compete with OpenAI: launching a standalone app for its Grok chatbot.

Musk created xAI as an alternative to OpenAI, the company he helped found but later distanced himself from over ideological differences. Now, The Wall Street Journal reports, xAI is planning to launch an app as soon as December that could go head-to-head with Open AI’s ChatGPT as it races to scale up. 

Currently, users can access Grok through X, but only if they subscribe to the service. Citing unnamed sources, the Journal reports that xAI is also behind customer support features for Starlink, part of Musk’s other company, SpaceX.  X did not immediately respond to a rust for comment on the report.

In my opinion, it looks like Elon Musk is very interested in making use of xAI right now. I’m not entirely sure what he plans to do with that.

X’s First Transparent Report Since Elon Musk’s Takeover

X,

Today, X released the company’s first transparency report since Elon Musk bought the company, formerly Twitter, in 2022, WIRED reported.

Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter would release transparency reports every six months. These largely cover the same grounds the new X report, giving specific numbers for takedowns, government requests for information, and content removals, as well as data about which content was reported and, in some cases, removed for violating policies.

The last transparency report available from Twitter covered the second half of 2021 and was 50 pages long. (X’s is a shorter 15 pages, but requests from governments are also listed elsewhere on the company’s website and have been consistently updated to remain in compliance with various government orders.)

While some numbers remain seemingly consistent across the reports, — reports of abuse and harassment are, somewhat, predictably high — in other areas, there’s a stark difference. For instance, in the 2021 report, accounts reported for hateful content accounted for nearly half of all reports, and 1 million of the 4.3 million accounts actioned. In the new X report, the company says it has taken action on only 2,361 accounts for posting hateful conduct.

The Hill reported the social platform X released its first transparency report since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the company nearly two years ago.

The Global Transparency Report, released Wednesday, provided data about user reports on content violating X’s rules and enforcement actions taken by the company, as well as government requests for information and content removals in the first half of 2024.

“Transparency is at the core of what we do at X,” a spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “As an entirely new company, we took time to rethink how best to transparently share data related to the enforcement of the policies that keep our community safe.”

X received more than 224 million user reports between January and June, according to the report. The largest share of user reports — nearly 82 million — were about abuse and harassment. 

Nearly 67 million user reports were in regard to hateful conduct, and another 40 million were about violent conduct.

Engadget reported X has published its most detailed accounting of its content moderation practices since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company. The report, X’s first in more than a year, provides insight into how X is enforcing its rules as it struggles to hang on to advertisers who have raised concerns about toxicity on the platform.

The report, which details content takedowns and account suspensions from the first half of 2024, shows that suspensions have more than tripled since the last time the company shared data. X suspended just under 5.3 million accounts during the period, compared with 1.6 million suspensions during the first six months of 2022.

In my opinion, it seems that X has a haphazard way of determining what accounts to remove, which ones to place a label on, and a lot of potential problems with trying to encourage brands to stay on the platform.

Brazil Court Asks X For Documents

X,

The Brazilian Supreme Court on Saturday asked Elon Musk-owned social platform X to present documents validating its new legal representation in the country, as the firm’s lawyers now say it will comply with court demands to be allowed to resume operations in Brazil, Reuters reported.

X was shut down in Brazil in late August after it did not comply with orders from the top court related to hate speech and moderation in the social platform.

But in the last few days, X representatives have started to publicly vocalize intentions to address the court demands, even though the firm had previously said it would not meet them.

X lawyers said late on Friday that the platform had named a legal representative in Brazil, addressing a key demand imposted by the court.

In a Saturday decision, the Supreme Court judge Alexander de Moraes gave five days for X to provide commercial registries and other documents proving that X formally signed Rachel de Oliveira Conceicao as its Brazil legal representative

Brazilian law requires foreign companies to have a legal representative to operate in the country. The representative would assume the legal responsibilities for the firm locally.

Engadget reported X is reportedly reversing course after weeks of refusing to comply with conditions set by the Brazilian Supreme Court that would allow it to operate in the country again. 

According to The New York Times, the company’s lawyers said in a Friday court filing that X has named a legal representative in Brazil as demanded by justice Alexandre de Moraes and removed accounts that the judge had identified as a threat to democracy, along with paying the fine it owed. But the publication also reports that the Brazil Supreme Court has said X did not submit all the necessary paperwork, and now has five days to do so.

The paperwork X failed to submit is that which would prove it formally appointed a legal representative in Brazil, as required by Brazlilian law, according to Reuters. The company has been working to restore service to users in Brazil after it was blocked at the end of August, and briefly came back online earlier this week using Cloudflare’s DNS. But, it said that this was “inadvertent and temporary.” 

In a statement, an X spokesperson said at the time, “While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again in Brazil soon, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil.

Mashable reported Elon Musk blinked first in a high-profile game of chicken between the tech billionaire and Brazil’s government.

Musk’s X quietly complied with demands from Brazil’s Supreme Court in a court filing Friday night, The New York Times reported. The hope is Brazil will soon lift its nationwide ban of the social media platform.

Now, all of a sudden, Musk has given in, according to The Times. The company’s lawyers reportedly noted that X had taken down the accounts in question, paid the required fines, and named a formal representative for the country.

In my opinion, it is good for the people of Brazil to once again have access X’s platform. Imagine how annoying it would be to wait for a billionaire to decide when he will comply with Brazil’s law regarding social media.

X Says It’s Closing Operations In Brazil

X,

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said today that it’s ending operations in Brazil, although the service will remain available to users in the country, TechCrunch reported.

The announcement comes amidst a legal battle with Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who sought to block certain accounts on X as part of an investigation into election disinformation and “digital militias.”

In a post from X’s global government affairs account, the company said Moraes has “threatened our legal representative in Brazil with arrest if we do not comply with his censorship orders.”

Media platform X said on Sunday it would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes, Reuters reported.

X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, claims Moraes secretly threatened one of the company’s legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform.

The social media giant published pictures of a document allegedly signed by Moraes which says a daily fine of 20,000 reais ($3,653) and an arrest decree would be imposed against X representative Rachel Nova Conceicao if the platform does not fully comply with Moraes’s orders.

“To protect the safety of our staff, we have made the decision to close our operation in Brazil, effective immediately,” X said. 

Brazil’s Supreme Court, where Moraes has a seat, told Reuters it would not speak on the matter and would not confirm or deny the authenticity of the document shared by X.

The X service remains available to the people of Brazil, the platform said on Saturday.

The social media platform X will close its office in Brazil amidst a legal battle with the South American nation’s Supreme Court over a purported secret order to remove some posts from the site in Brazil, according to a statement posted by the company on X, The Hill reported.

“The decision to close the X office in Brazil was difficult, but, if we had agreed to @alexandre’s (illegal) secret censorship and private information handover demands, there as no way we could explain our actions without being ashamed,” Musk wrote on X.

X posted a screenshot of the order from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who’s been investigating digital militias that have been accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during he government of far-right former President Jair Bolsanaro.

Earlier in the year, Moraes directed X to block some of those accounts. X complied and then Musk said he would reactivate the accounts on X that the judge had ordered blocked. Musk called Moraes’s decision regarding X “unconstitutional”.

In my opinion, I doubt that Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes are going to make peace together. They both seem adamant on getting their way.

Elon Musk’s AI Image Chatbot Runs Amok

X,

The latest edition of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok debuted a new image generation tool on Wednesday that lacked most of the safety guardrails that have become standard within the artificial intelligence industry, The Guardian reported.

Grok’s new feature, which is currently limited to paid subscribers of X, led to a flood of bizarre, offensive AI-generated images of political figures and celebrities on the social network formerly known as Twitter.

The Image generator can produce a variety of images that similar AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have blocked for violating rules on misinformation and abuse. 

In prompts and images reviewed by The Guardian, Grok’s output included representations of Donald Trump flying a plane into the World Trade Center buildings and the prophet Muhammad holding a bomb, as well as depictions of Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in lingerie — all women who are already frequent targets for online harassment.

ChatGPT, by contrast, rejects such prompts that involve copyrighted characters, as most other AI visualizers including ChatGPT do. Grok produced images of Mickey Mouse saluting Adolf Hitler and Donald Duck using heroin, for example. Disney did not return a request for comment.

TechCrunch reported Elon Musk’s Grok released a new AI image generation feature on Tuesday night that, just like the AI chatbot, has very few safeguards.

The social media site is already flooded with outrageous images from the new feature. That certainly raises concerns heading into an election cycle, but strictly speaking it’s not really Elon Musk’s AI company powering the madness. Musk seems to have found a company that sympathizes with his vision for Grok as an “anti-woke chatbot” without the strict guardrails found in OpenAI’s Dall-E or Google’s Imagen. 

On Tuesday, xAI announced a collaboration with Black Forest Labs, an AI image and video startup launched on August 1, to power Grok’s image generator using its FLUX.1 model.

The Verge reported xAI’s chatbot now lets you create images from text prompts and publish them to X — and so far, the rollout seems as chaotic as everything else on Elon Musk’s social network.

Subscribers to X Premium, which grants access to Grok, have been posting everything from Barack Obama doing cocaine to Donald Trump with a pregnant women who (vaguely) resembles Kamala Harris, to Trump and Harris pointing guns. With US elections approaching and X already under scrutiny from regulators in Europe, it’s a recipe for a new fight over the risks of generative AI.

According to The Verge, OpenAI, by contrast, will refuse prompts for real people. Nazi symbols, “harmful stereotypes of misinformation” and other potentially controversial subjects on top of predictable no-go zones like porn. 

Unlike Grok, it also adds an identifying watermark to images it does make. Users have coaxed major chatbots into producing images similar to the ones described above, but it often requires slang or other linguistic workarounds, and the loopholes are typically closed when people point them out.

In my opinion, allowing Grok AI to run wild with user prompts could become a problem. For example, Disney could potentially choose to file a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s Grok for using Disney’s characters without permission. 

How Elon Musk Is Diverting Talent, Data, And GPUs From His Other Businesses

X,

Elon Musk has big plans for his startup xAI. A key part: using other companies, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

The billionaire’s year-old artificial-intelligence bet is relying on talent, data, and hardware from his other businesses to help it develop what he has said will become the most powerful AI in the world by December.

So far, xAI has hired at least 11 employees who worked at Tesla, according to xAI’s website and LinkedIn profiles. That includes six who have worked directly on the Autopilot team focused on AI-powered self-driving technology that Musk has said is pivotal for Tesla’s future.

The startup has leased computer chips critical for AI — called graphic processing units, or GPUs — from his social media platform X, according to people familiar with the matter, and it boasts access to real-time X data.

Musk also has asked for GPUs that were reserved for Tesla to be redirected to xAI and X. He has talked publicly about the troves of visual data that Tesla collects, which he has said could serve as a resource to train xAI’s models, and said last fall that X shareholders will own 24% of xAI.

CNBC reported Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., is asking the Tesla board if it’s looked into CEO Elon Musk’s use of company resources to benefit his other ventures, including SpaceX and xAI.

“Tesla’s Board of Directors appears to be failing to meet its fiduciary duties to Tesla’s shareholders by neglecting to address company CEO Elon Musk’s apparent conflicts of interest,” Warren wrote in a 10-page letter to Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm on Thursday. Musk also operates Neuralink and The Boring Co.

Warren sits on both the Senate’s Banking and Armed Services committees, and has expressed similar concerns in the past, including requests to the SEC to investigate Musk and Tesla. She also sent correspondence to Denholm in late 2022 after Musk sold billions of dollars worth of his Tesla shares in part to finance a leveraged buyout of Twitter, which he later rebranded X.

CleanTechnica reported the social media platform X seems to be in real trouble. Since billionaire Elon Musk acquired the site for $44 billion in 2022, it appears that X revenue stream have plummeted. 

The bottom line has gotten so band that Musk has sued a global advertising alliance and several major companies, including Unilever, Mars, and CVS Health. He’s accusing them of unlawfully conspiring to shun his social network and to intentionally drive X revenue loss through a “massive advertiser boycott.”

In my opinion, Elon Musk appears to be having difficulties with X (formally Twitter). It is unclear to me why he would move data – perhaps provided by X users — to xAI.