X launches Grok-powered custom feeds and shuts down Communities

In short: X has launched Grok-powered Custom Timelines for Premium subscribers on iOS, and it is shutting down X Communities.

What happened

X announced a new feature called Custom Timelines. These are topic-based feeds you can pin to your home screen, so you can quickly jump into posts about one subject, like Sports, Technology, or Elections.

X says the feature is powered by Grok, its AI system (a computer program that tries to understand and sort text, like a very fast reader and librarian). Instead of relying mostly on hashtags or keywords, X says Grok reads posts, figures out what they are about, and adds topic labels.

At launch, Custom Timelines offer more than 75 topics. Premium users on iOS can pin up to 10 topics or lists, reorder them, and swipe between them from the home tab. Android support is “in the works,” according to the report.

The rollout comes alongside another change. X is shutting down X Communities, a feature that let people create member-based groups around topics. X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, said Communities had seen declining use.

The TechCrunch report also notes an advertising change. In testing, the second post in each custom feed appeared as an ad, which could give X more places to show ads.

Why it matters

For everyday users, this changes how you find posts on X. It is more like choosing channels on a TV, instead of relying on one main feed to guess what you want. It also matters because AI-made sorting can shape what news and opinions you see, even when the goal is personalization.

Source: TechCrunch AI