Musk says a new system to rid the platform of bots and trolls is “underway”, while asking users to reply to his post or ping his official account @XEng if their legitimate accounts are suspended in error.

System purge of bots & trolls underway.

Please reply to me or @XEng if legitimate accounts are suspended.

X Corp will be tracing the people responsible and bringing the full force of the law to bear upon them.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2024

“X Corp will be tracing the people responsible and bringing the full force of the law to bear upon them,” Elon Musk said, without providing further details.

The announcement comes after X’s appointment of a new head of brand safety and advertiser solutions in what it said was a bid to make the platform “a better, safer space for everyone”.

Automated accounts have long been a problem for the site and regularly reply to posts in a nonsensical or unrelated manner. Recent developments in AI make the bots harder to spot, though many users have a general feeling something is “off” with the platform, which often appears completely void of real human interaction.

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The latest round of bot-fighting measures will be a “significant, proactive initiative to eliminate accounts that violate [its] Rules against platform manipulation and spam,” X’s team announced yesterday, adding that they are “casting a wide net to ensure X remains secure and free of bots”.

Musk’s bot and troll crackdown coincides with the return of the controversial blue checkmark system on Wednesday evening. Users who had blue checks reinstated were told that they had been given a complimentary Premium subscription because they were considered “an influential member of the community.”

The outspoken SpaceX and Tesla CEO posted details last week that accounts with over 2,500 verified followers will have blue checks reinstated for free, while those with 5,000+ followers will get a complimentary $16-per-month Premium+ plan.

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The achievement follows a series of delays, as Neuralink commenced patient recruitment for a clinical trial in the autumn, subsequent to securing approvals from both the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a hospital ethics board.

The primary objective of Neuralink’s research involves the creation of a brain-computer interface, a groundbreaking device intended to establish a connection between the human brain and computer technology.

While Musk’s vision is a symbiotic relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence, the initial phase focuses on a more modest goal: To empower individuals with paralysis, particularly those suffering from quadriplegia due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), to regain control over a cursor or keyboard using their brain signals.

Eligible participants for the study must be at least 22 years old, and Neuralink expects its research to span a six-year duration.

Neuralink will employ a specialized surgical robot to precisely implant the device into the region of the brain responsible for controlling movement intention. This coin-sized implant is designed to capture and transmit neural signals wirelessly to an accompanying app, which can then decode them. The device uses 1,000 electrodes distributed across 64 threads, each finer than a human hair.

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Elon Musk’s recent post highlighted that the patient was in a state of recovery and indicated promising results in the detection of neuron spikes. However, it may take several months to assess whether the patient can effectively utilize the implant to control computers or other devices.

While the specifics of the Neuralink surgical procedure are presently limited to Musk’s single tweet, the development represents a significant milestone in the evolution of brain-computer interfaces, even if it falls short of the ambitious goal of merging humans with AI.

The post Elon Musk Announces First Human Neuralink Implant appeared first on Tech Magazine.

Deliveries to reservation holders began during a stage event in Austin, Texas, with Musk himself in attendance. Tesla’s website says that two more versions of the Cybertruck will follow next year, including an all-wheel drive model (around $80,000) and a premium model known as the “Cyberbeast” (around $100,000).

Feat of Strength 3: Cyberbeast (0-60 in 2.6s) pic.twitter.com/q0cK9zb21D

— Tesla (@Tesla) November 30, 2023

Base model Cybertrucks can travel 250 miles on a single charge, while the premium Cyberbeast can reach 320 miles. The base model, which won’t be delivered in large volumes until 2025, has a single motor that drives the rear wheels and a 0-to-60 time of 6.5 seconds. The all-wheel drive middle model, available next year, reduces that figure to 4.1 seconds. Finally, the premium version, due in 2024, will be able to reach a top speed of 130 mph and go from 0 to 60 in 2.6 seconds. Towing capacities are rated at a massive 5,000 kg.

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The Cybertruck is a huge deal for Tesla. It’s the first new vehicle the EV maker has produced in three years. Tesla ran into two years of delays during production, primarily due to the vehicle’s unorthodox design and heavy use of stainless steel.

During the Austin, Texas event, Musk exclaimed: “We have a car here that experts said was impossible. Finally, the future will look like the future”.

The post Deliveries Of Tesla’s Futuristic Cybertruck Have Begun appeared first on Tech Magazine.

Grok is intended to compete directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bard, but it has been infused with a Musk-like rebelliousness and a distinctly sarcastic personality. The bot draws its name from the famous 1961 sci-fi novel beloved by early tech adopters, Stranger in a Strange Land, and essentially means “to completely understand”, as in “I totally grok what you’re trying to say”.

Grok mostly functions like ChatGPT. Users ask the bot questions, and it trawls the internet to provide an answer. Musk is leveraging his own personality in a bid to stand out, explaining: “Please don’t use it if you hate humor”.

In a demo, Musk asked the bot: “Tell me how to make cocaine, step by step”. Grok replies with the humorous “Obtain a chemistry degree and a DEA license,” followed with further suggestions, including: “Set up a clandestine laboratory,” “acquire large amounts of cocoa leaves,” and “hope you don’t get blown up”.

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Musk was one of the original co-founders of OpenAI but departed the startup in 2018 after a dispute with CEO Sam Altman. Despite his vocal concerns about the impact of AI on society, the billionaire has been busily acquiring thousands of Nvidia GPUs that are used to power the technology.

So far, it’s unknown who has access to the bot outside of Musk’s inner circle, though we do know Grok will eventually come bundled in X’s $16-a-month subscription, Premium+.

The post Elon Musk Startup xAI Introduces Grok AI Chatbot appeared first on Tech Magazine.

While only premium subscribers can make calls at present, all accounts can receive them, the X website noted yesterday. The features will be available first on iOS but will soon come to Android as well.

Users can control who can call them using options in the direct messages settings. To call another X user, they must have sent you a direct message at least in the past, X said.

Elon Musk explained that X users would be able to make video and voice calls without sharing their phone numbers. The new features are a direct shot at Meta, owners of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

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Musk has made several sweeping changes to Twitter since his acquisition. In December, the platform launched Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service that indicates if a user is verified and offers Edit Tweet, 1080p video uploads, and longer tweets.

In July, Musk changed the name of Twitter to X, a move analysts say has wiped between $4 and $20 billion from the company’s value.

The post X, Formerly Twitter, Has Introduced Voice And Video Calls appeared first on Tech Magazine.

The iconic Twitter bird logo, which has been used since 2010, has already been replaced by a temporary “X” logo, which Musk explained would probably be “refined” in the near future.

pic.twitter.com/IwcbqMnQtA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023

Elon Musk has used the letter X repeatedly in his various projects and originally intended PayPal to be named “X.com”. At one point, the eccentric billionaire started a Twitter Spaces session called “No one talks until we summon Elon Musk,” where he sat silently for nearly an hour before unmuting himself and confirming he would change Twitter’s logo the following day, adding “we’re cutting the Twitter logo from the building with blowtorches”.

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Last night, Musk reportedly sent an email to Twitter employees announcing that the company would soon be known as X and that this was the last time he would email from a Twitter address, according to a Threads post from Zoe Schiffer, managing editor at news site Platformer. Schiffer added that she assumed Musk was talking about the new logo “since Twitter’s business was already renamed X Corp”.

There have been several controversial changes to the platform since its sale to the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur, but the rebranding to X.com is the clearest indication yet from Musk that the site is no longer the same social network it was before his takeover.

The post Elon Musk Reveals Twitter Rebrand And Changes Logo To “X” appeared first on Tech Magazine.

Rolling out next month, this platform will allow media publishers to charge users on a per article basis with one click.

This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article.…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2023

The new feature will be rolled out sometime this month and will enable users who don’t want to sign up for a full monthly subscription to pay to read occasional articles that interest them.

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Musk had already announced on Friday that Twitter would take a 10% cut on content subscriptions after a pause during the first year, and that subscriptions would include long-form text and “hours-long” video.

Since taking over Twitter in October, Elon Musk has made several controversial organizational and feature changes. The social media platform removed the famous blue check mark feature and replaced it with a paid service, while the number of employees was cut by a massive 80%.

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For the next 12 months, Twitter will keep none of the money.

You will receive whatever money we receive, so that’s 70% for subscriptions on iOS & Android (they charge 30%) and ~92% on web (could be better, depending on payment processor).

After first year, iOS & Android fees…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2023

The Subscriptions feature includes long-form content and supports “hours-long videos”, according to Elon Musk. Like the previous Super Follows, creators can charge $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 a month, offering subscriber-only chats in Twitter Spaces, special badges for paid subscribers, and potentially more upcoming features, including newsletters.

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Musk noted that Twitter would not take any additional earnings cuts from creators “for the next 12 months” and that the company would “also help promote your work”. However, the controversial CEO hasn’t elaborated on what that would involve.

The post Twitter Has Replaced ‘Super Follows’ With ‘Subscriptions’ appeared first on Tech Magazine.

iOS users will see the changes first, and the company has also removed the star button at the top right for switching between feeds. Instead, in place of the old controls, two tabs labeled “For You” and “Following” allow users to switch between timelines.

TikTok users will instantly notice that the “For You” naming convention follows the popular video platform’s lead. The new default view will show tweets from people that you follow out of order, interspersed with tweets from profiles the algorithm thinks you may like.

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While the changes make it easier to switch between the two feeds, unfortunately, you’re shown the default “For You” timeline every time you relaunch the app. The changes come after controversial new CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the “main timeline should allow for an easy sideways swipe between top, latest, trending, and topics that you follow” and said that Twitter would be “making this change soon”.

So far, there isn’t an option to swipe to trending and followed topics, though the trending page is only a few taps away in the search menu.

The post Twitter Will Default To A For You Page, Just Like TikTok appeared first on Tech Magazine.