• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

To help boost X’s struggling ad business, X and xAI owner Elon Musk told advertisers via a live broadcast on his social media platform Wednesday that he plans to allow marketers to buy ad space in responses provided by the Grok chatbot.

Expressing his approval of Grok’s overall development and ability as a trained large-language model, Musk said that it’s time to “turn our attention to how we pay for those expensive GPUs,” referencing the chips used to power the chatbot.

“If a user’s trying to solve a problem [by asking Grok], then advertising the specific solution would be ideal at that point,” he added.

According to Financial Times, which originally reported on the story, X’s advertising technology team is still having trouble displaying ads to their intended audiences. Addressing the issue, Musk shared plans to use technology from xAI – the entrepreneur’s AI startup that acquired X for $45 billion earlier this year – to improve the social network’s ad targeting.

Regarding logistics, Musk’s announcement remains vague, reminiscent of X’s recent post about the platform’s upcoming ad changes.

Alongside ads becoming “sleeker” in appearance, X says that advertisers can expect Grok-powered features, including enhanced campaign insights, ad copy generation, and an “Explain this post” feature that will provide users with more information about the brand and its products.