Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has returned to the forefront of the technology scene. Generative AI has been democratised with the mass adoption of OpenAI's app, becoming the fastest consumer-facing technology to surpass 100 million users in two months.
The financial markets have also shared in this craze, as evidenced by NVIDIA's meteoric rise, accounting for more than a quarter of the S&P 500's performance in 2024.
On the other hand, the situation is more complex for Elon Musk, as the valuation of social network X has reportedly fallen by 79% since it was bought in October 2022 for $44 billion (and delisted from the stock market), according to analysts at Fidelity.
A platform that has been struggling for the past 2 years The American entrepreneur's vision is not unanimously supported by users, advertisers and investors. By shedding around 80% of his staff, Elon Musk has drastically reduced content moderation to make way for total freedom of expression. As a result, a majority of advertisers have ceased their activities on the platform after observing an increase in hateful and discriminatory content.
As advertising revenue is at the heart of the business model, the company's revenues have fallen by 23% in 2023 and 15% in 2024 according to internal documents revealed by Bloomberg.
While the drastic reduction in its workforce is helping to cope better with this drop in revenue, Elon Musk is also looking to monetise other aspects of the social network to compensate for the exodus of advertisers. He is therefore quickly allowing his users to sign up to various third-party subscriptions for access to account certification, increased visibility in the feed, use of the Grok AI, or content monetisation.
Many users have signed up to these subscriptions, but a measure that is more discreet in the eyes of the general public could also have a major impact on X's revenues. In February 2023, Elon Musk dramatically increased the subscription price for the API, a digital key to access data and activity on X in real time.
Already important to many companies and research organisations, the demand for access to this data could take on a whole new dimension thanks to the rise of AI agents on the internet.
The rise of agents on X: at the crossroads of AI and cryptocurrencies The evolution of AI agents and their ability to carry out autonomous tasks has been observed for several years in various sectors such as medicine, automobiles and customer service.
Yet X has recently become the scene of unprecedented experiments at the crossroads of AI and cryptocurrencies. In June 2024, Andy Ayrey launched Terminal of Truths , an X account of an AI trained on Internet culture (Reddit, 4chan), endowed with an evolving and singular personality.
On October 10, an anonymous person offers this agent, on his own wallet, part of the tokens of a Pump[.]fun memecoin linked to the content generated by the agent. The latter directly endorses the memecoin, which reaches one billion in capitalisation on 12 November, making Terminal of Truths the first millionaire AI agent.
Subsequently, many similar experiments have seen the light of day, generally with the aim of transparently developing autonomous agents capable of creating value on the Internet through their creativity, humour, or even expertise.
Thanks to their ability to interact with the blockchain, agents are proliferating very quickly: the fact that they can create a cryptocurrency, manage a wallet and a budget, or carry out transactions, enables them to finance themselves directly from the community and this reinforces their autonomy. This ability to use cryptocurrencies also offers agents new opportunities to create value on the Internet.
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"Crypto Twitter", an ideal hub for the advent of AI agents At present, most AI agents creating content on networks are only present on X. While this is partly due to the fact that it is simpler to generate quality content in writing, several features of Elon Musk's network also make it a preferred choice for players in the sector.
Among these players, the DAO ai16z, a parody of the famous investment fund a16z, has played an important role in the proliferation of AI agents. The majority of agents on X with wallets are based on their open-source ElizaOS model, which enables agents of this type to be created quickly.
> Lire aussi : Les agents IA crypto qui ont retenu notre attention
For Jin, one of DAO's main contributors, the libertarian philosophy that the American entrepreneur is criticised for is actually a major asset of the platform: "When building AI agents, it's important to make them evolve in an environment where they can feed on uncensored and varied content. To that end, X is an excellent hub for these agents because of its commitment to freedom of expression."
At a time when ethical considerations about AI are taking precedence over technological advances, the wealth of content and infinite human interaction available on X are a force for moving in the right direction. In this regard, Jin points out, "The coexistence of agents with humans and their interactions encourage the development of human-centric AI."
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A non-negligible financial windfall Deploying and maintaining the activities of an agent on X has a significant cost. Subscription to API Pro, at a price of $5,000 per month, is often necessary to allow the agent to act without major restrictions and to maximise their visibility (create posts, reply to other posts or in private messages, etc.).
It is also essential to ensure the agent's ongoing training and so that they can create their content based on the platform's data.
Beyond the API, agents also need a Premium+ subscription in the same way as a human to take advantage of all the features on X as well as to gain legitimacy and visibility.
If we are to believe the vision of Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, which he shared in particular at the World Economic Forum 2024, autonomous agents will be omnipresent on a daily basis to assist us. In an increasingly digital and connected world, these agents will also be omnipresent on the Internet and social networks.
In the same way that a human needs visibility to highlight any work, it could be just as important for these agents to be present on social networks in order to grow their business and carry out their mission.
If Elon Musk's network manages to establish itself as a real hub for all these future virtual assistants, their infinite need for data could represent a major financial windfall for X.
Finally, the agent market also represents a major strategic issue in the highly competitive market for LLM (Large Language Model) type AIs like Grok. The fact that the latter is natively integrated into X could enable it to gain share in a market largely dominated by OpenAI.
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