In a move to entice more users to subscribe to its premium tiers, X (formerly Twitter) has rolled out a new feature powered by Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok. According to an announcement by the X Engineering team on Friday, Premium subscribers will now see AI-generated summaries of the trending stories displayed on the “For You” tab in the Explore section.
The For You page serves as a hub for catching up on popular news and conversations happening across X’s platform. By tapping on each trending story, users will now be greeted with a summary generated by Grok, providing an overview of the subject matter.
For instance, a summary on the topic of AI engineer burnout begins by stating, “AI engineers are facing burnout and rushed rollouts due to the competitive race in the tech industry, as companies prioritize investor satisfaction over solving actual problems.” The summary then touches upon the critique that “proper safeguards and thoughtful innovation should not be afterthoughts in the pursuit of AI investments.”
Notably, a disclaimer appears below each summary, warning users that “Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.”
While the concept of summarizing trends is not new, X’s approach of using an AI chatbot to generate the summaries is a first. Previously, Twitter had annotated some trends with additional context, but the rollout was inconsistent.
Access to Grok is being positioned as a selling point for X’s premium subscriptions. Users can interact with the “snarky and rebellious” AI by tapping the bottom middle button of the app. Grok’s unique selling point is its exclusive and real-time access to X’s data.
According to tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz, Musk’s plan is for Grok’s summaries to be primarily based on conversations happening on X, rather than the actual article text being discussed. This approach has been deemed “controversial” but also presents an opportunity.
As AI-powered news summaries become more prevalent, concerns have been raised about the potential impact on news publishers and the spread of misinformation. Some publishers have partnered with AI providers like OpenAI, while X’s approach allows it to access the news through conversations on its platform, without needing to partner with publishers directly.
Grok’s Stories feature is now rolling out to Premium X subscribers, with access starting at $8 per month for web subscriptions.
