I'm older and work in the press. So when we think of “news” it usually goes something like this: From an organization that specializes in distributing and possibly sourcing/verifying facts about current events. You know, newspapers, websites, TV shows/networks, etc.
Elon Musk thinks news is something different: What people are talking about on the service formerly known as twitter.
And that's the vision he's using to build a news service at Company X, formerly known as Twitter, using Grok, a homegrown AI chatbot.
Musk's idea, he told journalist Alex Kantrowitz, is that the best way to learn about the news is not by reading or listening to the news, but by listening to what people have to say. To tell About the news.
Conversations about X make up the core, or indeed nearly all, of Grok's summaries. Musk said Grok does not directly look at the text of articles and relies solely on social posts. “This is a summary of what people said about X,” he said.
And just to be clear, Musk's employees have confirmed to Kantrowitz that these are indeed his marching orders. “Igor Babushkin, a technical staff member who works at Musk's xAI, said his team is focused on 'making Grok understand the news purely as it stands.'” Posted on X. ”
look. We know that “understanding the news solely from what's posted on the company formerly known as Twitter” doesn't give many people peace of mind. Definitely not in the Elon Musk era of the company formerly known as Twitter.
But… maybe I like it a little? In theory?
Let me be clear: understanding what is going on in the world exclusively It's not a good idea to think about what people are saying on X or other social media platforms. But consuming commentary on what people have said about what's going on in the world isn't a terrible idea. Maybe there are some good ones?
And, more practically speaking, consumption of that kind of comment is actually teeth It's how many people find out what's going on in the world.Even if you're a serious news consumer (thank you!), most of the information you're getting is probably it's not Not directly from the primary news source, but from someone who has aggregated or at least repeated what the primary news source said. This is basic economics. It's very expensive to go find the news yourself, but it's very cheap to talk about what's in the news and package and present news that other people have gotten. That's why even large, well-funded news organizations (like CNN) spend most of their time discussing and debating things they've already heard, rather than introducing new things. There is.
There are many use cases where generative AI is not very useful, but it seems to be very useful when summarizing existing information, especially when the information has already been entered. So, why not summarize the explanation?
Certainty: Yes, it is foolish to rely on an AI machine run by Elon Musk for factual information.
But let's be honest: That caveat applies to any AI machine right now. Last week, for example, I wrote about Google's AI (not the much-maligned Gemini, but the artificial intelligence that Google has begun building into some people's phones, whether they want it or not) to have World War II. When I asked him a question about the Tower of London, he answered with confidence. Answer about Big Ben instead.
So let's assume that Any About generation AI answers anything This should at best be considered a starting point, which may or may not be true, and which will definitely require fact-checking before being used to inform consequential decisions. Same as when the source is “something I read on the internet” or “something I heard on a podcast.”
As Kantrowitz points out, this leads to another problem with Musk's solution. At this point, Musk is hardly even willing to talk about the original sources of the information he's summarizing.
When I asked Grok, “Tell me about Elon Musk's plan to use grok to summarize the news,” he provided a very convincing summary of Kantrowitz's article. But to find the source of that summary, scroll all the way to the bottom of the entry, scroll all the way to the right through other people's tweets that have no information about Musk's plans, and then click the link to the original article. I had to find Trowicz's tweet.
This is a terrible way to give people access to more information. It's also terrible for publishers like Kantrowitz, who still go to great lengths to find new information. This means that Mr. Musk benefits from their work and gets little in return, not even a link.
Alas, I think that's where we're heading in general with AI. Despite efforts to negotiate and litigate Big AI, most publishers believe that Big AI engines provide increasingly complete answers to queries, offering little incentive for users to move into that world. facing the world. Please refer to the original source for more information.
Granted, it would be great if Grok gave Kantrowitz more prominent billing when providing answers, and depending on Musk's feelings at the time, he may or may not. I think.
But media companies that don't have a plan, or at least a desire, for AI news beyond hoping for a check or a court order will be in trouble anyway.
