The summarization of information on the web is definitely one of the notable applications of generative AI models. While AI models from big companies such as Google are dominating this application, Musk’s social media platform X is now also on the list.
The AI-generated news snippets feature is called “Stories on X”
X now shows AI-generated news snippets thanks to its open-source AI model Grok. The feature, known as “Stories on X,” presents trending news stories in the “For you” section. The idea is to blend breaking news and commentary in the form of snippets. It will offer real-time summaries of events. “Grok is analyzing sometimes tens of thousands of X posts to render a news summary,” Musk said. Users who are willing to know more about the event will be able to delve deeper via chat on Grok.
Grok has been available on the platform for customers of its paid plans for a while. The new summarization feature, if implemented properly, could become a big reason for users to pay for the Premium subscription plan.
One notable aspect of this new summarization feature is that it curates information from the conversation, which often includes helpful analysis from outsiders. “The goal is simple: to provide maximally accurate and timely information, citing the most significant sources,” Musk said. He also added that the news summary will update as more information becomes available about a certain event or topic.
Choosing people’s conversations on the platform instead of publications to come up with a summary about an event has its own advantages. “Courts tend to include commentary under the provision for fair use, as opposed to original work,” said Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, which represents thousands of news publishers. It could save them from a lot of trouble that comes due to copyright infringement. For reference, eight newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft for the same last week.
The summarization feature is only available on the web and iOS for now
The news comes from the X Engineering account with an image representation showing what “Stories on X” looks like. The post reveals that this new AI-generated news snippets feature on X will appear in the “For you” section of the Explore tab. The post also notes that the “Stories on X” feature will only be available to the iOS and web versions, but not on Android as of now.
The “Stories on X” feature also appears to focus on a proper citation that will give users a way to go deeper into the source material once their curiosity is piqued. Nonetheless, they will have to figure out ways to solve issues like hallucination.
