Elon Musk hopes for his ethically dubious generative AI toolGrok, will help stem the ongoing exodus from his social media site Musk did it has released a free version of the AI ​​chatbot Grok to X users without premium accounts.

Digital market research firm Similarweb estimates that the number of daily active users is X fell from 32.3 million to 29.6 milliona decline of 8.4% since the beginning of October in the US. The exodus coincides with Musk’s Taking over @America trading on October 6thto promote Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy.

The social media company has become a cesspool of right-wing hate and misinformation since Musk acquired it for $44 billion in October 2022. It has lost around 80% of its value since Musk took over and has Since then, users have continued to bleed. Numerous news organizations and journalists fled the site in Novemberin anticipation of doubtful changes to the terms of use of X.

At the same time, other social media spaces like Meta’s Threads and Bluesky have seen millions of new users flood their apps, and Musk is keenly feeling the shortfall. Grok, which launched in late November and was only available to premium subscribers at the time, was seen as a way for X to boost its meager subscription sales. The free version allows users to ask Grok up to 10 questions every two hours and receive multiple image analyzes and generations per day. Without an X account you cannot use the chatbot.

But Grok has serious disadvantages. Accordingly Wired“Grok is prone to hallucinations and Biaswith the AI ​​assistant is held responsible for the spread of false information about the 2024 election.” It also integrates deeply with X and implements a lot of data collection, especially since X users have consented to sharing their data whether they use the service or not.

Musk not only needs to stop the number of X users, but also increase the number of his Grok users compete in the AI ​​space with more established companies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s AI Assistant have hundreds of millions of additional users. To this end, Musk has allowed users to create and Spread fake images on X with Groka violation of the company’s rules against misinformation.

Government spending on AI systems increased Development has increased significantly in recent years, and Musk may also feel the need to make it appear that his website and generative AI are robust enough to be considered for government contracts. Reports that he will serve as co-head of Trump’s Agency for Government Efficiency could have an influence on it.

But while Musk raves about Donald Trump’s plan Allowing billionaires to carve up the United States and obtain “fully expedited approvals and approvals, including but by no means limited to all environmental approvals,” he clearly has no plans to clean up the social media cesspool he created, and that is that Main problem.

“There’s a lot of content being amplified that most reasonable people would question whether it’s worth amplifying,” said Bruce Daisley, a former Twitter vice president outside the U.S. market The Guardian. “If I went to a Christmas market and there was a group of racist protesters in the corner of that Christmas market, I probably wouldn’t stay there.”

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