Tag: x

Elon Musk Announces X Premium, X Premium+ Access for Free, but There’s a Catch

Elon Musk has announced that X (formerly known as Twitter) will now offer features from X Premium and X Premium+ — the microblogging platform’s paid subscription — at no additional cost, to specific users on the platform. However, not all X users will be eligible, according to details shared by the company’s CEO on Thursday. Premium subscription plans on X reduce the number of ads on the timeline, while allowing users to access to premium features as well as Grok, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot created by xAI, the startup founded by Musk.

In a post on X, Musk said that all accounts on the platform that have “over 2,500 verified subscriber followers” will have access to features available with an X Premium subscription. In India, an X Premium subscription costs Rs. 650 a month (when subscribing from the website) while an annual subscription is priced at Rs. 6,800.

Meanwhile, the platform’s CEO also said that users who have over 5,000 verified subscriber followers would be granted access to features that are available with an X Premium+ subscription, that is currently priced at Rs. 1,300 a month (if you sign up from the web interface) or Rs. 13,600 for a year. All four subscription prices are considerably higher when signing up from the Android and iOS apps.

Musk didn’t provide a reason for granting access to X Premium and X Premium+ features for select users, but the decision comes on the heels of a report that revealed that fewer people were using the microblogging service, which was struggling to retain users. The platform has refuted these claims. 

This means that you will need to have 2,500 followers who have paid for a Premium or Premium+ subscription to gain access to these features, which also include a blue verification check mark and the ability to monetise their posts. X shows fewer ads to Premium subscribers, while those who have a Premium+ subscription do not see any advertisements. 

Both subscriptions offer features like the ability to edit or undo posts, increased character limit, post longer videos, background video playback, video downloads, and access to the Grok AI chatbot. Premium+ access also gives subscribers the ability to post articles. The subscriptions also allow users to customise the mobile app interface and hide likes and subscriptions.

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Elon Musk Says Grok AI Will Be Available to All Premium Subscribers on X ‘Later This Week’

Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly known as Twitter), announced on Wednesday that Grok AI, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot made by xAI, will be made available to all Premium subscribers of the platform. The move comes just days after the billionaire made its large language model (LLM) Grok-1 available in open source. So far, the AI chatbot was only bundled with the most expensive subscription plan Premium+, but now it is being added to the Premium tier as well. The Basic tier will still not be able to access Grok AI.

Musk made the announcement via a post on X where he said, “Later this week, Grok will be enabled for all premium subscribers (not just premium+).” While he did not specify the exact date when this will be rolled out, it is believed to be made available before April. Currently, the chatbot is available in 48 countries including India, and all of the regions are likely to get the expansion of Grok to the Premium tier.

In India, the Premium+ subscription to X comes at the price of Rs. 1,300 a month or Rs. 13,600 a year. In contrast, the Premium tier costs Rs. 650 a month or Rs. 6,800 a year. The extra benefits in the Premium+ tier currently include access to Grok, no ads shown (vs fewer ads in Premium compared to Basic), the largest reply boost in all tiers, and the ability to write and publish articles directly on X.

With this update, Premium users will also be able to use Grok. The chatbot was developed by Musk’s AI firm xAI and was launched in early access to X’s Premium+ users in the US in December 2023. The. chatbot is currently available in 48 countries. It was built on the AI firm’s native large language model (LLM) Grok-1. Like most chatbots, it can respond to questions, generate content, and hold a conversation with the user. The company says that the foundation model was not pre-trained on any data taken from X.

Earlier this month, xAI released the base model weights and network architecture of Grok-1, a 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts model, in open-source under the Apache 2.0 licence, allowing both research use as well as commercial usage.

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Elon Musk’s X Loses Lawsuit Against Hate Speech Watchdog CCDH

A U.S. judge on Monday threw out Elon Musk’s lawsuit against a nonprofit group that faulted him for allowing a rise in hate speech on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said it was “evident” that Musk’s X Corp sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) because he didn’t like its criticism, and thought its research would hurt X’s image and scare advertisers away.

“X Corp has brought this case in order to punish CCDH for CCDH publications that criticized X Corp–and perhaps in order to dissuade others who might wish to engage in such criticism,” Breyer wrote.

“It is impossible to read the complaint and not conclude that X Corp is far more concerned about CCDH’s speech than it is its data collection methods,” he added.

X, in a statement, said it plans to appeal.

The decision is a blow to Musk, the world’s third-richest person, who has for many years styled himself as a free-speech champion.

But since paying $44 billion for Twitter in October 2022, he has faced wide criticism for firing too many people who policed misinformation, and from civil rights groups for allowing more harmful and abusive posts.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in a statement said Breyer’s decision affirms his group’s right “to hold accountable social media companies for decisions they make behind closed doors.”

Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for the nonprofit, said the decision shows that Musk “cannot bend the rule of law to his will.”

Musk and X have also faced many other lawsuits, including claims by former Twitter executives that Musk improperly withheld severance, and by vendors claiming they haven’t been paid.

Tesla, the electric vehicle maker that Musk runs, has separately faced several lawsuits claiming it tolerated the harassment of workers. It has denied those claims.

Musk takeover not foreseeable

X accused the center of breaching its 2019 user contract by scraping and cherry-picking data to create false and misleading reports that Musk turned X into a haven for hate speech, extremism and misinformation.

According to X’s complaint filed last July, the nonprofit designed its “scare campaign” to drive away advertisers, and caused tens of millions of dollars in damages.

X had argued that the nonprofit was bound by Musk’s policy changes, and could have left Twitter if it didn’t like them.

Breyer agreed that X’s desire to staunch criticism was “entirely reasonable from a business point of view.”

But he said the nonprofit could not have foreseen when it signed up with Twitter that Musk would eventually take over and loosen how it moderated user content.

Breyer also dismissed X’s claims against the European Climate Foundation, a nonprofit based in The Hague, Netherlands that promotes efforts to mitigate climate change.

X had accused it of conspiring with the Center for Countering Digital Hate to illegally gather data.

Nathaniel Bach, a lawyer for ECF, said that nonprofit was grateful for the dismissal of Musk’s “frivolous” lawsuit.

Musk’s own speech has often also drawn complaints.

In November 2023, Musk endorsed an antisemitic post on X that said members of the Jewish community were stoking hatred against white people, saying the user spoke “the actual truth.”

Musk has denied being antisemitic and sought to make amends, including in a January visit to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz in southern Poland.

The case is X Corp v. Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 23-03836.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Microsoft, Meta and X Join Fortnite Maker Epic Games’ Battle Against Apple

Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Elon Musk’s X and Match Group on Wednesday joined “Fortnite” video game maker Epic Games’ protest that Apple has failed to honor a court-ordered injunction governing payments in its lucrative App Store.

The technology companies, which developed some of the most popular apps in the App Store, said Apple was in “clear violation” of the Sept. 2021 injunction by making it difficult to steer consumers to cheaper means to pay for digital content.

Apple declined to comment specifically on the accusation, which was contained in a filing with the Oakland, California federal court.

It referred to its Jan. 16 statement that it had fully complied with the injunction, which it said would protect consumers and “the integrity of Apple’s ecosystem” while ensuring that developers do not get a free ride.

Epic had sued Apple in 2020, saying it violated antitrust law by requiring consumers to obtain apps through the App Store and charging developers up to 30% commissions on purchases.

The injunction required Apple to let developers provide links and buttons to direct consumers to alternative payment options.

Last week, Epic demanded that Apple be held in contempt, saying new rules and a new 27% fee on developers made the links effectively useless.

In Wednesday’s filing, the technology companies said Apple’s conduct “for all practical purposes” entrenches anti-steering rules that the court found illegal, propping up Apple’s “excessive” commissions and harming consumers and developers.

“Apple’s restrictions on where and how developers can communicate with their users about their options for purchasing in-app content create significant barriers to competition and artificially inflate prices,” the filing said.

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear Apple’s appeal from the injunction. It also decided against hearing Epic’s appeal of lower court findings that Apple’s policies did not violate federal antitrust law.

Apple has until April 3 to formally respond to Epic’s filing. The company is based in Cupertino, California, while Epic is based in Cary, North Carolina.

The case is Epic Games Inc v Apple Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-05640.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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‘X is Becoming a Video First Platform’, Says CEO Linda Yaccarino

X (formerly known as Twitter) has revealed its overall year-on-year growth numbers for video consumption and time spent watching videos, claiming that the social media platform is showing strong video-centric content consumption behaviour. The company CEO Linda Yaccarino also acknowledged the platform’s rise in the video domain. Notably, X owner Elon Musk has emphasised the importance of becoming video-first and released several new video-centric features ever since he took over the company. Last month, X introduced audio and video calling features for all users.

The information was shared by X Data, the official data-sharing account of the platform. As per the post, the social media giant has grown by 35 percent year-on-year in terms of video views. This indicates that the overall views of videos on the platform have grown more than one-third since the previous financial year. In addition, the post also added that the total time spent on videos has increased by 17 percent year-on-year.

Further, the account claimed that four out of every five user sessions now include watching at least one video. CEO Yaccarino reshared the post and said, “X is becoming a video first platform”. The growth in video consumption comes on the back of Musk’s ambitions to create a video-centric platform. Ever since he took control of the social media giant, the platform has released multiple video features for users.

In May 2023, Musk announced that X Premium subscribers would be able to upload two-hour-long videos, allowing premium users to add videos as large as 8GB. In August, the social media platform rolled out support for live videos, matching its capabilities with rivals such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. The same month, Musk allowed verified users to download videos if the content creator enabled the option. Other than that, the billionaire has also worked on improving the video recommendation algorithm and added an infinite scroll feature when watching videos on the Android or iOS app.

However, videos are not the only area where the platform is adding new features. According to a report, the company’s developers are working on bringing passkey support to the Android app, after introducing it to the iOS app earlier this year. This will allow users to circumvent the limitations with passwords and rely on biometric logins and similar methods to keep their accounts secure.

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Elon Musk Says His AI Startup xAI’s Grok Chatbot Will Go Open-Source

Elon Musk said on Monday his artificial intelligence startup xAI would open-source its ChatGPT challenger “Grok” this week, days after he sued OpenAI for abandoning its original mission in favor of a for-profit model.

The billionaire has warned on several occasions against the use of technology for profit by big technology companies such as Google. He filed the lawsuit against Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which he co-founded in 2015 but left three years later, last week.

“This week, @xAI will open source Grok,” Musk said in a post on X, the social media firm he owns.

The move could give the public free access to experiment with the code behind the technology and aligns xAI with firms such as Meta and France’s Mistral, both of which have open-source AI models.

Google has also released an AI model called Gemma that outside developers can potentially fashion according to their needs.

Tech investors including OpenAI backer Vinod Khosla and Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, have been debating about open-sourcing in AI since Musk filed the lawsuit against the ChatGPT maker.

While open-sourcing technology can help speed up innovations, some experts have warned that open-source AI models could be used by terrorists to create chemical weapons or even develop a conscious super-intelligence beyond human control.

Musk said at Britain’s AI Safety Summit last year that he wanted to establish a “third-party referee” that could oversee firms developing AI and sound the alarm if they have concerns.

Seeking an alternative to OpenAI and Google, Musk launched xAI last year to create what he said would be a “maximum truth-seeking AI”. In December, the startup rolled out Grok for Premium+ subscribers of X.

In a podcast episode with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman, Musk suggested in November that he favored the concept of open-source AI.

“The name, the open in open AI, is supposed to mean open source, and it was created as a nonprofit open source. And now it is a closed source for maximum profit,” Musk had said.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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Neuralink’s First Human Patient Able to Control Mouse Through Thinking, Says Elon Musk

The first human patient implanted with a brain-chip from Neuralink appears to have fully recovered and is able to control a computer mouse using their thoughts, the startup’s founder Elon Musk said late on Monday.

“Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of. Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking,” Musk said in a Spaces event on social media platform X.

Musk said Neuralink was now trying to get as many mouse button clicks as possible from the patient.

Neuralink did not immediately reply to Reuters’ request for further details.

The firm successfully implanted a chip on its first human patient last month, after receiving approval for human trial recruitment in September.

The study uses a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink has said, adding that the initial goal is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts.

Musk has grand ambitions for Neuralink, saying it would facilitate speedy surgical insertions of its chip devices to treat conditions like obesity, autism, depression, and schizophrenia.

Neuralink, which was valued at about $5 billion last year, has faced repeated calls for scrutiny regarding its safety protocols. Reuters reported last month that the firm was fined for violating U.S. Department of Transportation rules regarding the movement of hazardous materials.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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Threads App Sees Rise in Downloads, Competitor X Falls in Top Downloaded Apps List: Report

Threads was launched by Meta’s Instagram in July 2023. It is a microblogging platform, similar to X (formerly Twitter). Within the first five days of its launch, the application saw 100 million registered users. However, the platform struggled to retain regular users on the text-based app after the initial rush. Since then the company has introduced several new features on the application aiming to enhance user experience. Threads appears to be gaining its footing back in the game as it saw an increase in the number of new downloads, while competitor X took a tumble.

An app intelligence firm Appfigures claimed in an analysis that Threads had 12 million new downloads on Apple’s App Store and 16 million on Google Play in December 2023. This resulted in the application ranking at number 4 and number 8, respectively on the Most Downloaded Apps list drawn up by the firm. Combined, Threads ranked at number 6 on the list of new downloads.

Threads currently has an estimated 160 million users, according to an online tracker, which notes that it uses “an approximation method based on a sampling of follower counts” since Meta stopped sharing user count numbers on July 11, 2023.

Threads parent Instagram ranked number 1 on the list with a combined new downloads count of 54 million, surpassing TikTok, which was listed with total new downloads of 47 million. Meta-owned Facebook and WhatsApp also made it to the top 10, with combined new downloads of 39 and 38 million, ranking at number 3 and 4, respectively.

A TechCrunch report shared an extensive version of the list, which showed Elon Musk-owned X with an estimated total new downloads of 8.5 million, resulting in the application climbing down to the 36th position. The drop may not be as alarming as it looks as a PCMag report notes that Twitter was launched in 2006 and already has 540 million users.

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Threads Gets Tags Feature That Lets Users Link Phrases, Emojis in Posts, Rolling Out Globally

Threads is now rolling out a new Tags feature globally on the platform. The Meta-owned platform was introduced earlier this year to rival Elon Musk’s X. Meta announced a few weeks back that it was testing the use of tags on Threads posts. This feature, also known as hashtags, has been popular across social media sites for years and it is available on several platforms including Threads-rival X, formerly Twitter. However, Thread’s version of hashtags comes with some limitations and alterations.

Instagram Head Adam Mosseri announced in a Threads post that users can now tag a topic in a post. He confirmed that the feature is rolling out to all users globally. The feature is said to help users categorise their posts and make them easier to find and engage with. Although the feature is similar to the hashtag feature available on other platforms that have become largely popular in the past few years, Threads tags come with some visible changes and a few functional alterations.

Mosseri explains that in a Threads tag, the “#” symbol will not be shown, and users can tag more than one word even if they are spaced out, and most importantly only one tag can be added per post. As per Mosseri, this take on tags is aimed at making conversations more focused on communities and less on “engagement hacking.”

To use a tag on Threads, you can use the “#” key on your keyboard or the new # button in the post composer. You will be presented with a list of existing topics to choose from or you can opt to create your own. You will be able to use spaces between words and include special characters within a tag.

Since the “#” symbol does not appear on the post, the Tag on a Threads post appears in blue, similar to a link. You can click on the tag to follow other conversations on the same topic. An Instagram Product Designer also added that emojis can also be used as or included in a tag.

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