This author says artificial intelligence could save Elon Musk’s X from destruction

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 entitled Fight of the Bird by Kurt Wagner was published earlier this year. It is mainly about the change of power between what was once called Twitter and the current incarnation under Elon Musk. The author recently told me that AI might be the only thing that could revive the app, or at least one day become an intelligent mind meld with Musk’s startup xAI.

“X is a much smaller company than Twitter was a few years ago,” says Wagner. “It feels like we’re in limbo right now. One possible outcome: X will eventually be integrated into xAI. This would embed X in a much more valuable, promising company and offer X investors a better potential return. It would also take the pressure off Elon to revive X’s business on his own.”

As we all know by now, AI is on a huge upward trajectory. Analysts predict it will become a trillion-dollar industry, and the annual growth is huge (approximately 37% growth expected per year). The ChatGPT app reached one million users in just five days.

If there’s one thing that could save X, it’s artificial intelligence. Imagine a radically transformed app that can write your posts, create content schedules, automatically reply to tweets, summarize the day’s news with a click, and even act as your virtual avatar. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that X hasn’t yet rolled out many of these AI-powered features.

The problems lie at the core of the company, says Wagner. And by “the core” we all mean Musk himself, who tends to make arbitrary decisions without thinking about the consequences. He is a real troublemaker in the truest sense of the word.

“X hasn’t yet found a way to build a sustainable business beyond advertising,” says Wagner. “I’m also not convinced that their move into payments will work. So let’s assume advertising is the business model they stick with. If that’s the case, I think it’s going to be very difficult for X to be commercially successful when Elon is as involved in everyday life as he is right now. When you talk to big advertisers, Elon’s unpredictability is one of their main concerns.”

At least with artificial intelligence there is some chance of relevance – and with social media, relevance is the ultimate growth engine. If you lose relevance, you lose users.

“Elon has a lot of money and I think he will be willing to pay out of his own pocket to keep X running as long as he believes he is funding a relevant and important platform for global conversation and politics,” says Wagner. “If X loses its place as a platform for discussing important cultural issues – politics, sports, etc. – I think there is also a risk of losing Elon’s attention.”

One of the truly remarkable things about artificial intelligence is that it creates relevance for itself. It’s a machine that constantly produces relevance. An AI can sift through trending topics and eat up relevance like popcorn, one post at a time. While some of us have to stay up to date and keep an eye on Google Trends, AI can drive the growth and relevance of apps like X without lifting a virtual finger.

The problem, of course, is that the same is true of any other social media app. AI wins when it advances faster and more intelligently than the next app. While X is often hampered by Musk and his hasty decisions, AI features could also allow the app to make dramatic progress. Let’s hope Musk and the rest of the X team can figure out how to save the app from itself.