X plans to combat AI-generated content while promoting Grok

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X vowed to implement new measures to combat the rise of artificial intelligence-powered bots, according to a Feb. 22 post from Nikita Bier, the company’s head of product.

Some of the platform changes will include user-implemented tags for AI-generated content, new anti-bot detection and removal measures.

At the same time, X is also promoting the use of its own Grok AI chatbot to assist with post creation. This emphasizes the awkward tightrope social media platforms are now walking, as they look to justify their investment in expensive AI projects, while also mitigating overuse of the exact same tools.

Bier has warned about this issue for some time, noting last September that AI bot profiles are “the scourge of X,” while also raising concerns about the dangers of AI spam, which he said would inundate all social platforms and messaging apps.

Yesterday, Bier again highlighted this concern, explaining that the platform must evolve if it wants to remain a relevant consideration.

As per Bier: “People come X to get a pulse on humanity. Because of that, the platform must make every effort to resist anything that misrepresents or adulterates that pulse. There is nothing more unsettling than expecting you’re reading the words of a human, only to find it was a machine, or an account operating at the direction of an undisclosed commercial or governmental entity.”

Bier said that in the AI era, X’s product, policies, and approach “will need to evolve meaningfully” in order to secure the global town square.

Which makes sense. Already, Pinterest is facing a significant challenge to weed out the influx of AI-generated content on its platform, which threatens to dilute the app’s value for real product discovery, while other apps are also dealing with user confusion around AI-generated content, leading to misunderstanding and misinterpretation in varying forms.

X itself has been dealing with the misuse of AI to depict people in sexually suggestive content, and that problem is likely to end up costing the company millions in fines. And yet, X is also working to integrate its Grok chatbot into every element of the app, with Grok’s “G” icon available at every stage of the usage process.

Users looking to generate content can tap the G within the post composer, and Grok will provide options on what to say. So X itself is directly encouraging people to use AI to post content that’s non-human, and not representative of a real human’s thinking, while its head of product is saying that this is an existential threat to the platform, and needs to be stamped out.

Of course, Bier is talking more about AI bots created at scale and used to flood the app with fully automated comments. But it’s all essentially the same thing, which leaves social platforms caught between promoting their expensive generative AI tools, and combating overuse of them.

And Bier is right, because this does dilute the value of X and every social media platform, since social media apps are, by design, intended to facilitate human engagement and human sharing. Social media is exactly that — social — which implies, or has generally implied, real communication between real people, and an opportunity for each user to share their perspective and experience with the world.   

AI bots do not add to this, and it could be argued that they significantly detract from it.

Still, social platforms are also optimally placed to build the best generative AI models because of the vast amount of data they have on human interactions and how people engage with one another. That information is what AI systems use to power their interactions, which they can then analyze to interpret and emulate human interaction.

It makes sense, then, why Meta and X are looking to lean into the latest AI trend, but the reality is that the current wave of generative AI tools doesn’t really fit into the primary use case for their apps.

As advertising enhancement options, they fit, analyzing vast swathes of user interaction data to determine the best audience for a promotion. As algorithm optimization tools, they work. But as tools to assist in human engagement, the risk of them diluting the core purpose, in giving each user a platform to share their own unique perspective, is significant. Arguably, they are detrimental in this respect.

So while platforms keep pumping out AI updates (note: Elon Musk said Grok 4.20 will be shipped this week), they’ll also continue to fight against the exact same thing, due to the risk of losing users because of AI overuse.

But AI is the trend of the moment, and with so much money being invested into their AI projects, it’s unclear what they can do.