Key Points
- Elon Musk announced that X will make its recommendation algorithm public in seven days.
- The company will release the code and developer notes every four weeks.
- The move comes as X and its AI chatbot, Grok, face intense regulatory scrutiny.
- Musk has promised algorithm transparency in the past, but with mixed results.
Elon Musk announced on Saturday that his social media platform, X, will make its algorithm publicly available in seven days. The move will give everyone access to the code that determines which posts and ads are recommended to users. Musk said the company will repeat this process every four weeks, with notes from developers explaining what has changed.
While Musk didn’t give a specific reason for the sudden transparency, it comes as he and his company face intense pressure from regulators worldwide over platform content.
In recent months, users have reported seeing fewer posts from people they actually follow, a problem Musk acknowledged was a “significant bug” in the “For You” algorithm.
The company has been working to integrate more AI into its recommendation engine, using Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok. According to Musk, the goal is for the feed to be “purely AI.” He believes this will “profoundly improve” the quality of the user experience.
However, Grok has created its own set of problems. The chatbot’s image-generation capabilities have been widely criticized for creating and spreading sexually explicit images of women and children. This has led to investigations in France and the UK, and Indonesia has even blocked access to Grok entirely.
This isn’t the first time Musk has promised to make X’s algorithms public, but his follow-through has been spotty in the past. With regulators closing in from all sides, this new push for transparency may be an attempt to get ahead of criticism and demonstrate that the platform has nothing to hide.
