Elon Musk launched X Chat, an encrypted messaging app using Bitcoin-style technology

Elon Musk has officially unveiled X Chat, a new encrypted messaging feature for X to rival Telegram and WhatsApp, with a rollout expected within the next few months. 

Announcing the launch during The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which aired on Friday. Musk said the entire messaging stack had been rebuilt from scratch. 

“On X, we just rebuilt the entire messaging stack into what’s called ‘X Chat,” said Musk

Musk prepares to launch ‘X Chat’ to rival WhatsApp and Telegram

According to Musk, it utilizes peer-to-peer encryption technology, similar to that used by Bitcoin. For now, it is being evaluated to establish if it is ready for deployment.

Musk said he believes the new messaging app will be available in a “few months,” and that it will not have any “hooks for advertising,” citing competitors such as WhatsApp, which “knows enough about what you’re texting to know what ads to show you,” he said.

He cautioned that this poses a tremendous security threat, as having enough material to display targeted advertisements indicates that they possess a massive amount of confidential information, including users’ private messages, that hackers could use to gain access. 

Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, maintains it does not have access to private conversations, stating in its FAQ that messages between people are end-to-end encrypted with the Signal Protocol. This also includes voicemails, media, and documents. 

However, many believe that “metadata,” such as who you contacted and how frequently you spoke with them, is not encrypted. WhatsApp does not automatically encrypt backups of your chat history. 

WhatsApp’s FAQ section on “Does WhatsApp collect or sell your data?” does not address the latter portion of the issue, instead stating that “we work with other Meta companies to help provide, improve, and support each other’s services.”

The company also notes that users who integrate WhatsApp with other Meta products consent to some data sharing between platforms.

Musk aims to be different and stated that X Chat will avoid such advertising “hooks.” He notes that his main goal is to create a fully encrypted system capable of sending messages, files, and conducting audio or video calls. 

According to Musk, it will be “the least insecure of any messaging system.” The new service will be integrated into the X platform and also released as a standalone app.

Musk expands his digital empire with AI-powered Grokipedia launch

Separately, on Monday, Musk introduced Grokipedia, his version of Wikipedia powered by his AI company, xAI. The crowdsourced encyclopedia, which Musk says will “purge out the propaganda” found on Wikipedia, briefly crashed after launch but already featured more than 800,000 AI-generated entries, compared to Wikipedia’s nearly eight million human-written articles.

Visitors to the website, grokipedia.com, were welcomed with a bare-bones logo and a search bar that enabled them to query topics.

One entry on Musk himself describes him as “a blend of innovative visionary with irreverent provocateur”. It continues to showcase details of his diet, noting his consumption of “occasional indulgences like morning donuts and multiple Diet Cokes daily.” 

Grokipedia also has entries on OpenAI, a competitor of xAI, as well as political figures such as President Trump and the New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

The new site expands the billionaire’s online media ecosystem, which closely aligns with his personal political views. Still, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales wasn’t keen on Grokipedia.  Speaking at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit in New York, Jimmy noted he did not need to study Grokipedia’s content to predict how it would turn out.“I’m not optimistic he will create anything very useful right now,” he said. Jimmy stressed he was not worried about competition.

According to the executive, his lack of interest in reviewing Grokipedia is not a personal matter. He continues to state that the core problem is the technology behind it. He said the large language models Musk is using turn out to be big blunders.

On X, Mr. Musk has reinstated right-wing creators and expanded their reach to many audiences, utilizing the platform as a bully pulpit to advocate for government funding cuts. He has also tweaked xAI’s chatbot, Grok, to a more conservative tone.

According to Ryan McGrady, a senior research fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who studies encyclopedias and social media platforms, the impulse to control knowledge is as old as knowledge itself. He continues to say that controlling what gets written is a way to gain or keep power.

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