X (formerly known as Twitter) is reportedly planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) to write Community Notes on the platform. As per the report, the company has asked developers to submit custom AI agents capable of verifying the authenticity of posts and providing neutral explanations about them. This will mark a big shift in the social media platform’s fact-checking programme, which so far relied on human users to write and vote for Community Notes. X is reportedly opting for AI agents to increase the scale and speed of fact-checking.
Keith Coleman, Vice President of Product at X, and the head of the Community Notes programme, told Bloomberg in an interview that the company was considering the usage of AI. For this, developers have reportedly been given the option to submit their own AI agents for review. The submitted AI agents are said to go through a run of writing practice notes, which will then be reviewed by the company.
If the company finds the AI agents to be helpful, they will be deployed to write notes on public posts of X, the report added. Notably, Bloomberg highlights that only human users will be conducting the reviews of published notes, and a note will only appear if multiple people with different viewpoints find it to be helpful. Coleman reportedly stated that AI-written Community Notes could appear later this month.
Coleman reportedly called the decision to onboard AI agents to write notes and let humans review the posts an “incredibly powerful” combination. He also hinted that once AI is involved, the number of Community Notes, which stands at hundreds per day, could significantly increase, the report said.
Notably, in 2021, the platform started a fact-checking platform called Birdwatch, where some users were selected to be contributors to fact-check public posts and verify their authenticity. Users would also vote on published notes as helpful or unhelpful. The crowdsourced programme was later rebranded to Community Notes in November 2022 after Elon Musk took over X. Ever since its inception, the service has only been managed by human users who volunteer for it.