Musk pledges X will publish recommendation code within seven days

Elon Musk announced that X will open its recommendation algorithm to public scrutiny within seven days, saying the company will publish “all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users.” The post, made on X on Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, promised the code would be republished and updated on a four-week cadence with “comprehensive developer notes” explaining changes.

The pledge is the latest in a string of public commitments by Mr. Musk to make X’s ranking systems more transparent and more dependent on artificial intelligence. In previous posts he described the long-term goal for the recommendation engine as “purely AI” and had at times said open-source updates would arrive “about every two weeks.” The new commitment specifies a four-week rhythm, superseding that earlier timeline.

The announcement comes amid mounting regulatory pressure in Europe and lingering doubts about whether past promises will be fulfilled. The European Union fined X €120 million in December 2025 for alleged breaches of transparency obligations under the Digital Services Act, citing issues tied to the platform’s subscription verification, ad repository transparency, and limits on researcher access. Paris prosecutors opened an investigation in July 2025 into suspected algorithmic bias and fraudulent data extraction. European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the commission has extended a retention order related to algorithmic dissemination of illegal content through the end of 2026.

Technically, the promise covers a broad swath of X’s systems as described in Mr. Musk’s post and subsequent company statements: outlets tracking the platform’s development say the release will include recommendation logic for both organic feed and advertising. X has been moving to incorporate its AI chatbot Grok into ranking; company materials indicate an ambition for Grok to evaluate more than 100 million daily posts to identify items likely to interest individual users. Earlier, in 2023, X published parts of its “For You” feed code to GitHub, but that repository has been described as outdated and missing key details.

The immediate questions for engineers, regulators and outside reviewers are straightforward. Officials and researchers will want to see which components are included under “all code”: whether data-preprocessing pipelines, model architectures, training routines, model weights, and ad-ranking modules are provided, and under what license. They will also look for verifiable developer notes that document code provenance, testing, and the exact nature of weekly or monthly changes. Independent technologists will check whether the promised updates are substantive or merely cosmetic, and whether the release includes sufficient information to assess bias, privacy risks, and vulnerability to abusive data extraction.

For users who have complained about sudden drops in content from people they follow, the release could clarify whether recent changes stem from automated AI ranking, a recognized “significant bug” in the For You algorithm acknowledged by Mr. Musk in October, or other factors. Regulators and prosecutors, meanwhile, will assess whether code publication meets legal transparency demands and addresses outstanding probes.

The pledge marks a high-stakes moment for X: if the company follows through with a detailed, usable repository and regular, documented updates, it could set a new standard for platform accountability. If past patterns repeat and the release proves partial or poorly maintained, the announcement may intensify regulatory scrutiny rather than defuse it.