Elon Musk and X. It's a weird, messy, and somehow still addictive saga. If you’ve been following the news this week, specifically January 15, 2026, you know the drama hasn't slowed down one bit. People love to say the platform is dying. They’ve been saying it since 2022. Yet, here we are, and the "everything app" vision is actually starting to look like a real thing, even if the road there is covered in digital potholes.
Honestly, the biggest mistake people make is treating X like it’s still Twitter. It isn't. The bird is dead. What’s left is a chaotic laboratory for Musk’s AI ambitions and a playground for his "maximally truthful" chatbot, Grok.
The Grok Deepfake Crisis: Why 2026 is Off to a Rough Start
Just yesterday, January 14, 2026, the UK government basically cornered Musk. Prime Minister Keir Starmer didn't hold back, calling certain AI-generated images coming out of Grok "disgusting" and "shameful." We’re talking about non-consensual sexual deepfakes—a nightmare scenario for any social media company.
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Musk’s response? He claimed he was "not aware of any naked underage images" and blamed "adversarial hacking." Classic Elon. But the pressure worked. X has officially started rolling out restrictions on Grok’s image-editing features. You can’t just ask it to "undress" a photo anymore. Ofcom is still breathing down their necks, though.
It’s a bizarre tension. Musk wants total free speech, but he's hitting the hard wall of international law. The platform is currently trying to "ensure full compliance," but critics like Liz Kendall say paywalling these AI tools is just monetizing the problem. It’s a mess.
Is X Actually Making Money Yet?
You’d think with all the advertiser boycotts, the bank accounts would be empty. Well, not exactly. Reports from late 2025 show that X actually saw its first major revenue hike under Musk's ownership. We’re talking about a projected $2.9 billion for the year.
Is that good? Kinda.
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It’s still way lower than the $4.4 billion Twitter was pulling in before the buyout. But a 10% increase from 2024 suggests that advertisers are slowly, cautiously, crawling back. Or maybe they’re just following the attention.
The xAI Safety Net
Here is the secret nobody talks about: X isn't just a social media company anymore. It’s an arm of xAI. In 2025, xAI basically acquired X. This was a massive move. Because xAI is valued at something like $230 billion, the financial "death spiral" of X doesn't matter as much. X is the data goldmine. Grok eats the posts, learns how humans talk, and becomes smarter.
The New Revenue Pillars
- X Premium: It’s not just a blue checkmark anymore; it’s access to the "Grok" brain.
- X Money: They’ve partnered with Visa. Real-time payments are finally rolling out this year.
- Creator Shares: Paying people to post has kept the "power users" from jumping ship to Threads.
The Algorithm is Going Public (Again)
Musk just announced that on January 17, 2026—literally two days from now—X will open-source its new recommendation algorithm. He wants to show the world exactly why you see what you see.
The goal is "unregretted user-seconds." That’s his new favorite metric. Basically, he wants you to spend time on the app and not feel like a piece of garbage afterward. Whether it works is another story. The current feed is heavily weighted toward Grok-powered relevance, and for a lot of people, that means it feels a bit like an echo chamber.
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What Most People Get Wrong About the Future
People think Musk wants to build a better Facebook. He doesn't. He’s trying to build Western WeChat.
In 2026, X is shifting toward being a utility. You'll use it to pay for things, watch long-form video, and talk to an AI that knows your personality better than your therapist. It’s ambitious. It’s also slightly terrifying.
The valuation is a rollercoaster. One day Fidelity says the company is worth $9 billion, and the next, Musk is raising money at a $44 billion valuation. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The "value" isn't in the ad revenue anymore; it's in the data. If you own the data that trains the world's most "rebellious" AI, you hold a lot of cards.
Practical Steps for Navigating X in 2026
If you're still on the platform or trying to run a business there, the rules have changed. Forget the old "best times to post" guides.
- Focus on Engagement, Not Reach: The new AI-sorted feed cares more about whether people reply than how many followers you have.
- Use the Widgets: X just launched iOS home screen widgets for Grok and news highlights. If you want to stay relevant, your content needs to be "snippet-friendly."
- Verify Everything: With the Grok image tools being so powerful (and controversial), don't trust any "leaked" photo you see on the timeline without a Community Note.
- Watch the Payments Rollout: If you’re a creator, get your X Money account set up as soon as it hits your region. The transaction fees are expected to be way lower than traditional banks.
The "everything app" isn't a myth anymore, but it's also not a utopia. It’s a high-speed experiment running on 20,000 GPUs. Hang on tight.