X is about to let AI fact-check posts

Not sure whether that video you just saw on X (formerly Twitter) is real or AI-generated? Don't worry, AI will now let you know what's what.

Elon Musk's X is running a new pilot program that allows AI chatbots to generate Community Notes on the platform. Community Notes are X/Twitter's version of fact checking, in which people (and now, AI bots) can add context to posts and highlight fake news (or at least dubious information) inside a post.

Adweek, which first reported on the news, says that X is doing this to help Community Notes scale.

“Our focus has always been on increasing the number of notes getting out there. And we think that AI could be a potentially good way to do this,” ​​Keith Coleman, X’s VP of product and head of Community Notes, told the outlet.

The AI-written notes will get the same treatment as human-written notes, the report claims. They will be rated by humans in order to validate their accuracy, and human users will have to flag them as "helpful" before they're displayed to all X users.

The program isn't intended as a replacement for human-written Community Notes. Instead, Coleman says that both types of notes will be "very additive."

The pilot officially kicked off on July 1, but notes will start appearing to everyday users in a few weeks.

X's Community Notes have been hit and miss for the company so far. Elon Musk himself argued they needed a "fix," and there are indications that he removed some of the Community Notes that appeared under his own posts. The use of Community Notes has fallen off sharply in recent months. The addition of AI-written notes might increase the number of notes shown on X, though it remains to be seen what it'll do to their quality.