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xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

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171–180 of 436 posts

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#172

Every week, at least once I am added to a spam Telegram group. It was fun earlier, but now it's a nuisance.

You can change that in Settings → Privacy and security → Invitations → Select My contacts

>You can change that in Settings → Privacy and security → Invitations → Select My contacts

Bizarre that that's not the default and that it's actually an option at all.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#173

Telegram is a haven for scammers and malware authors, who frequently use it as a command and control channel. These scammers and malware authors can now seamlessly integrate Grok into their tools. Congrats everyone.

What is the alternative? Discord is just a PITA to use. I need to suggest something to a group of people that have been meeting online since 2007 (it's a small group with widely varying technical abilities/time).

> What is the alternative?

WhatsApp is better even if you don't like Zuckerberg. I may not trust Zuck, but I trust a Russian dude and Musk a lot less.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#174

Now xAI is fully plugged into the zeitgeist. Integration into telegram chats seems like a natural extension to the data xAI gets from Twitter. $40 billion for twitter is a steal in retrospect now that we've entered an era of insatiable appetite for training data.

> $40 billion for twitter is a steal

How so, when they could have paid around $300M for the data?

Telegram may even be more valuable in terms of conversations, because Twitter data has very low signal:noise ratio - such as replies whose entirity are 3-word sentences or just emojis

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#175
post #125

Call me stupid, but I fundamentally do not grasp why xAI would pay Telegram for access to its users. $300M seems like a crazy amount of money to put into a chat app. I am genuinely curious about the business strategy behind the move bc that would be a market worth exploring - having something that the AI industry would pay for bc they are willing to spend a lot right now.

oh, cause telegram is not a chat app, it's Facebook of eastern Europe

And how is the data of Eastern Europe as valuable as xAI is paying for it?

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#176

This just made a whole ton of people I know on telegram (furries who make the internets go) immediately accelerate their movement off the platform. I found out about this news because of some backup signal rooms started sending notifications. They need to get ahead of the privacy implications and quickly. Furries are basically the roma of the internet at this point - what they value hasn't changed (anonymity, moderat…

Where are they going?

Signal and matrix probably

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#179

> Telegram is the most popular messaging app in Iran and Uzbekistan [1] > Telegram’s largest market is India, which accounts for more than 20% of its userbase. Telegram also has a large amount of users in countries with heavy censorship and surveillance, such as Iran, Russia, and Uzbekistan. [1] > Percentage of users via region: Asia 38%, Europe 27%, Latin America 21%, MEMA 8% [1] It sure is valuable data - if you ar…

> Telegram also has a large amount of users in countries with heavy censorship and surveillance

That citizens of those countries are allowed to use Telegram says something about the privacy it affords to them.

Re: xAI to pay telegram $300M to integrate Grok into the chat app

#180
post #15
post #6

Feels oh so telling that xAI has to pay Telegram and not the other way around. If these offerings were so great wouldn't we all be clamoring for it?

It's the next logical step after companies shoving AI into every corner of their own products regardless of whether their users want it - now they're paying other companies to shove AI things into their products regardless of whether their users want it. Genuine user interest doesn't come close to justifying their insane valuations so they have to put their thumb on the scale by shoving it everyones face and then pre…

Example: Since this deal was cash + equity I wondered whether telegram has a public valuation. I searched google and got an AI summary saying that the market capitalization of TELEGRAM is $7.4767.

That's dollars not billion dollars, because google's AI summary was referring to some scam coin which has a total marketcap of a big mac and fries plus or minus. It seems now to have updated to refer to the messaging app and _their_ (probably also scam)coin.

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