Musks

“Elon Musk Announces: AI Chatbot Grok Will be Available for All Premium Subscribers on X Starting This Week”

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Following Elon Musk’s xAI’s move to open source its Grok large language model earlier in March, the X owner on Tuesday said that the company formerly known as Twitter will soon offer the Grok chatbot to more paying subscribers. In a post on X, Musk announced Grok will become available to Premium subscribers this week, not just those on the higher-end tier, Premium+, as before. Previously, Grok was only available to Premium+ subscribers, at $16 per month or a hefty $168 per year. Most notably, Grok has the ability to access real-time X data — something rivals can’t offer. Of course, the value of that data under Musk’s reign may be diminishing if X is losing users.

Judge Rejects Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against Anti-Hate Research Organization

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A federal judge sided against Elon Musk today, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Musk and X that targeted a nonprofit that researches online hate. In the lawsuit, X claimed that it lost “tens of millions of dollars” as a direct result of the CCDH’s research. Musk, who personally directed the lawsuit, called the CCDH “an evil propaganda machine” in replies on X. The nonprofit, formed in 2018, researches trends in hate speech, extremism and misinformation on major social networks. Unlike the CCDH lawsuit, X is suing Media Matters for America in Texas, which doesn’t share California’s protections against frivolous lawsuits designed to stifle free speech.

The Significance of Elon Musk’s Open-Source AI Company, Grok: A Critical Analysis

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Elon Musk’s xAI released its Grok large language model as “open source” over the weekend. But does releasing the code for something like Grok actually contribute to the AI development community? This isn’t the first time the terms “open” and “open source” have been questioned or abused in the AI world. So where does xAI’s Grok release fall on this spectrum? Is his nascent AI company really dedicated to open source development?

Musk’s Innovation, Grok, Embraces Open-Source as Reddit Reveals Revised IPO Filing

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Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, in which we take a look back at the weekend and what’s ahead in the week. Over the weekend, we dropped an interview with Roger Lee that is well worth your time, and here’s our take on Reddit’s IPO financials. Here’s what we got into today:

Elon Musk Launches Legal Battle Against Anti-Hate Research Organization

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Elon Musk’s crusade against the extremism research organization the Center for Countering Digital Hate will have its day in court on Thursday. After Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the CCDH published reports detailing rising hate speech on X and how unbanned accounts, including neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, stood to make the company millions in ad revenue. Unlike the CCDH lawsuit, X is suing Media Matters for America in Texas, which doesn’t have California’s anti-SLAPP protections. A loss in court for the CCDH would likely have an immediate chilling effect on researchers who track hate speech and misinformation on social media. “This ridiculous lawsuit is a textbook example of a wealthy, unaccountable company weaponizing the courts to silence researchers, simply for studying the spread of hate speech, misinformation and extremism online,” Ahmed said.

India receives orders from Musk’s X to withhold accounts and tweets

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X, formerly known as Twitter, said Wednesday it is withholding specific accounts and posts in India, action it said the firm disagrees with, in response to executive orders issued by the Indian government. Non-compliance with the executive orders, X said, would have subjected the firm to “potential penalties including significant fines and imprisonment.”X’s Global Government Affairs said legal restrictions prevent it from publishing the executive orders, but “we believe that making them public is essential for transparency.” X will file a writ appeal challenging the Indian government’s blocking orders, it said, and has notified users who are impacted by the orders. The disclosure from X follows New Delhi ordering to temporarily block about 177 accounts and posts surrounding farmers’ protests in the country. As privacy advocate Apar Gupta wrote in a recent post on X:Blocking orders for Twitter accounts of farm leaders have been issued in advance. This is not surprising, what does provide anguish is the vile commentary against farmers on social media.

“Experience Futuristic Transactions with X’s Revolutionary AI in 2024”

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In an announcement today, X shared its roadmap for the year ahead, which will include AI-powered experiences and the launch of peer-to-peer payments, among other initiatives. In Musk’s vision, X users will be able to send money to others on the platform and extract those funds to authenticated bank accounts. In the X blog post published today, the company claims it will launch peer-to-peer payments this year, to unlock “more user utility and new opportunities for commerce,” suggesting a tie-in with other X products, like creator revenue sharing and online shopping. The latter has been a particular source of concern for X advertisers, who have found that despite X’s measures, their ads were placed next to toxic content or hate speech, leading many to withdraw. 80,000+ creators have also received payouts via X’s revenue-sharing program in under a year’s time, but X did not provide a figure.

Indian Telecom Law Gains Approval, Enabling Musk’s Starlink to Proceed Despite Privacy Concerns

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The bill also mandates biometric verification for subscribers and restricts the number of SIM cards each subscriber uses to limit fraud. The legacy of the old scammers in the telecom sector will be left behind, and arrangements will be made through this bill to make the telecom sector a sunrise sector,” Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Indian telecom minister, said while introducing the bill in the parliament. Interestingly, the telecom bill excludes the term “OTT,” available in its initial draft last year, indicating regulations for over-the-top (OTT) messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. “The bill is regressive as it enhances the government’s colonial-era powers to intercept communications and shut down the internet. It undermines end-to-end encryption, which is crucial for privacy,” said Namrata Maheshwari, Asia Pacific Policy Counsel at Access Now, in a prepared statement.

Global Outages Continue to Plague Elon Musk’s X

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Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered an outage globally earlier Thursday that lasted for more than an hour. X Pro, formerly known as TweetDeck, also faced the outage. This was not Twitter’s first outage – the abrupt workforce cuts earlier exposed the site to more vulnerabilities and reliability issues. The last major outage on the platform, which was still called Twitter at that time, occurred in early July. Users encountered “rate limit exceeded” and “cannot retrieve tweets” errors.

Elon Musk’s Company Under Investigation by EU for Illegal Content, Moderation, Transparency, and UX Deception

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Elon Musk’s X marks the spot of the first confirmed investigation opened by the European Union under its rebooted digital rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA). Its earlier actions were focused on concerns about the spread of illegal content and disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war. So the Commission’s official scrutiny of X could have real world implications for how the platform operates sooner rather than later. However the Commission obviously has doubts X has gone far enough on the transparency front to meet the DSA’s bar. The investigation may also test Musk’s mettle for what could be an expensive head-on clash with EU regulators.