Elon Musk is planning to slide ads directly into your chatbot replies. During a live chat with advertisers this week (as first reported by Financial Times), Musk said that X, formerly Twitter, will soon start serving ads inside Grok, its AI chatbot. That means while you’re asking Grok a question about literally anything, you could also be served an ad, mid-answer.
According to Musk, this new ad strategy is about two things:
- Paying the GPU bills (AI isn’t cheap), and
- Reviving X’s struggling ad business, which has been in a bit of a free fall since former CEO Linda Yaccarino left the company.
“Our focus thus far has just been on making Grok the smartest, most accurate AI in the world, and I think we’ve largely succeeded in that,” Musk said. “So now we’ll turn our attention to how do we pay for those expensive GPUs.”
Related: Elon Musk’s xAI Launches Grok Imagine: AI Video Generator With NSFW Capabilities
His pitch to advertisers? Pretty straightforward:
If someone asks Grok a question, why not give them a targeted ad right when they’re looking for a solution? It is the AI version of “you might also like…”
But that is not all. Musk also confirmed he plans to use tech from his AI company, xAI, to improve ad targeting across the platform. (ICYMI: xAI acquired X earlier this year for a casual $45 billion.)
So in short: AI, ads, and more Musk. Whether users are on board is still TBD. If your AI assistant starts giving advice and pitching products, is it still an assistant, or just the world’s smartest salesperson?
