Elon Musk says his social media platform X will make its new algorithm available to the public. The change, which will take place over the next six days, marks the end of all code that automatically recommends both organic and advertising posts, according to a Musk post on the platform.
“This will run again approximately every 4 weeks, alongside more in-depth developer notes to help you understand what has changed,” the post said.
The ruling comes after the European Commission (EC) extended a retention order it sent to Musk last year (in French) through 2026. That order in question applies to algorithms and to the sharing of illegal material.
“What this is saying to a platform is, keep your internal documents, do not dispose of them because they might be relevant for our doubts about your compliance … and we need to have the possibility to access these if we ask for it specifically,” EC spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters last week in a news briefing.
Musk faces a backlash in the EU and beyond after it emerged that Grok, the chatbot behind his xAI startup, was deployed to create nonconsensual sexualised images of women and children.
Prosecutors in Paris last year investigated X for algorithmic bias and fraudulent data extraction, according to a Reuters report. The platform called it a “politically motivated criminal investigation” and said it threatens the free speech of its users.
X was also slapped with a $140 million fine in December by the European Union, which accused the company of breaching the Digital Services Act.
X had broken the law by failing to verify who is behind an account when selling a blue checkmark, which indicates to other users that the account is verified. It has sold what’s known in Silicon Valley as a “check mark.”
It also claims the company violates the DSA’s transparency and accessibility requirements by stopping researchers who wish to sift through its ad repository to identify scams or other threats, and by imposing “unnecessary barriers” on those who do.
xAI raised $20 billion in a Series E funding round last week to launch its full-intent, advanced-level AI. The company also said the new funds had exceeded its $15 billion goal.
“This funding will supercharge our cutting-edge infrastructure buildout, which will enable us to quickly innovate and launch truly transformative AI products that serve billions of people around the world, while also doubling down on future-facing research that paves the way for xAI’s central paradigm: Understanding the Universe,” the company said in a news release.
