CANNES, FRANCE – JUNE 19: Elon Musk attends ‘Exploring the New Frontiers of Innovation: Mark Read in … [+]
Artificial intelligence could save the world.
Well, maybe not—but at least it could save Elon Musk’s X app.
A wonderfully written and well-researched book called Battle of the Bird by Kurt Wagner came out earlier this year. It’s mostly about the transition of power between what was once called Twitter to the current incarnation under Elon Musk. The author told me recently that AI could be the one thing that could resurrect the app, or at least become a smart mind-meld with Musk’s startup xAI someday.
“X is a much smaller business than Twitter was a few years prior,” says Wagner. “It feels like we are in a state of limbo right now. One possible outcome here: X ultimately gets folded into xAI. This would cocoon X within a much more valuable, much more promising venture and offer a better potential return to X investors. It would also take some pressure off Elon to resurrect X’s business on its own.”
As we all know by now, AI is on a massive upward trajectory. Analyst firms are predicting it will grow into a trillion-dollar industry, and year-on-year growth is off the charts (about 37% expected growth each year). The ChatGPT app reached one million users in just five days.
If there’s anything that could save X, it will be artificial intelligence. Imagine a radically altered app that can write your posts, create content plans, automatically respond to tweets, summarize the news of the day with a click, and even act as your virtual avatar. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that X hasn’t already launched many of these AI-enabled features.
The problems are really at the core of the company, says Wagner. And, by “the core,” we all mean Musk himself, who is prone to making random decisions without thinking through the consequences. He’s a true firebrand in every sense of the word.
“X has not yet figured out a way to build a sustainable business beyond advertising,” says Wagner. “I’m not convinced their move into payments will work, either. So let’s assume advertising is the business model they are stuck with. If that’s the case, I think it will be very hard for X to succeed business-wise with Elon as heavily involved day-to-day as he is right now. If you go talk to big advertisers, one of their chief concerns is Elon’s unpredictability.”
At least with artificial intelligence, there is some chance at relevance—and with social media, relevance is the ultimate engine to drive growth. Lose relevance, and you lose users.
“Elon has a lot of money, and I think he will be willing to pay out-of-pocket to keep X running so long as he believes he’s funding a relevant and important platform for global conversations and politics,” says Wagner. “If X starts to lose its place as the go-to platform to discuss major cultural issues—politics, sports, etc.—I think it runs the risk of losing Elon’s attention, too.”
One of the truly remarkable features of artificial intelligence is that it feeds relevance to itself. It is a perpetual relevance machine. An AI can scour trending topics and ingest relevance like popcorn, one post after the next. While some of us have to play catch-up with the news and keep an eye on Google Trends, AI can fuel growth and relevance on apps like X without lifting a virtual finger.
The problem, of course, is that so can every other social media app. AI wins when it advances faster and with more intelligence than the next app. While X is often handicapped by Musk and his rash decisions, it could also gain a dramatic boost from AI features. Here’s hoping Musk and the rest of the X team figure out how to save the app from themselves.
