Fears AI factcheckers on X could increase promotion of conspiracy theories

A decision by Elon Musk's X social media platform to enlist artificial intelligence chatbots to draft factchecks risks increasing the promotion of "lies and conspiracy theories", a former UK technology minister has warned. Damian Collins accused Musk's firm of "leaving it to bots to edit the news" after X announced on Tuesday that it would allow large language models to write community notes to clarify or correct contentious posts, before users approve them for publication. The notes have previously been written by humans. X said using AI to write factchecking notes – which sit beneath some X posts – "advances the state of the art in improving information quality on the internet". Keith Coleman, the vice-president of product at X, said humans would review AI-generated notes and the note would appear only if people with a variety of viewpoints found it useful.