Elon Musk Says Semantic Search Coming Soon to X

Except for X, and his grand vision for constructing a broader social/entertainment utility, Elon Musk can also be investing in AI, and constructing his own generative AI models which, in his words, can be “maximally truth looking for”, and never be influenced by political agendas.

And it can also feed into the X platform, based on a post from Musk over the weekend.

In response to a criticism of X’s current search functionality, Musk shared this:

So X is seemingly working to construct more semantic data matching into its systems, which might then provide improved search capability, while also potentially providing all latest data insights for businesses and creators, that may higher understand the context of a mention inside a post, versus simply feeding through keyword matches.

Which has change into a spotlight of X’s renewed push to combat hate speech within the app. Despite third-party reports that hate speech mentions have increased since Musk took over the platform late last 12 months, X’s own commissioned research shows that once you consider the context of such mentions, versus tallying keyword matches, actual instances of hate speech have declined, with some 86% of the slur usage within the app not actually posted in a negative or harmful way.

In other words, context matters, and it looks like X can be hoping to make use of AI to higher sort such, and supply more insight into how words are getting used in posts, versus simply providing you with a list of mentions, which aren’t all the time complete or accurate either way.

Musk announced that improving the platform’s search functionality was a “high priority” within the early stages of his takeover on the app, and has also pledged to incorporate semantic keyword-based targeting for X ads, in addition to improved search feedback loops to iterate on its search offering.  

To this point, none of those have come to fruition, but as noted, Musk and his team are also developing the xAI model, which can play a job in facilitating these improvements, and constructing a greater contextual targeting system.

Which could deliver significant improvements. It’s not clear how long the system will take to be built, nor how exactly it can link back into the X app. Nevertheless it does seem that that is the broader view, as a part of the rapid evolution of the platform.

Which suggests you might see an improved X search system coming soon. We’ll keep you updated on any progress.