Elon Musk admits X needs “massive improvements” after open sourcing new algorithm

Social media platform X has open sourced its new algorithm, with owner Elon Musk defending it as users responded to the changes with criticism.

Musk highlighted that the new algorithm was powered by the same transformer architecture as xAI’s Grok model.

“We know the algorithm is dumb and needs massive improvements, but at least you can see us struggle to make it better in real-time and with transparency. No other social media companies do this,” posted Musk on January 20.

X users from across the political spectrum have complained that their engagement rates and accounts’ reach sharply dropped, or that they were being censored by the new algorithm. Other X users complained about low-quality content being overrepresented in their ‘For You’ feeds.

xAI noted that it had “eliminated every single hand-engineered feature and most heuristics from the system,” and that the Grok-based transformer would largely help determine content that was relevant to the user, based on their engagement history.

On January 11, X owner Elon Musk had promised to make the social media platform’s algorithm open source in seven days.

X’s new announcement comes as users and regulators around the world reacted with outrage to the AI chatbot Grok non-consensually undressing people through their images on X.