X is debuting AI-powered advertising tools designed to automate ad creation and performance analysis, the company announced Friday.
Two new features, rolling out in phases to advertisers, rely on X’s proprietary AI assistant Grok to generate ad copy, imagery, and campaign insights with minimal human input.
“Prefill with Grok” is a new creation tool for advertisers. Instead of manually developing creative, users can enter their website URL, and Grok will analyze the content to produce a ready-to-use ad. Advertisers can tweak the copy or swap out images if needed before launching the campaign.
The second new tool, “Analyze Campaign with Grok,” provides automated campaign performance measurement, “empowering you to refine your targeting, adjust your creative, and maximize your impact — all in a fraction of the time,” the company said in its announcement.
AI-powered advertising has long been common in the digital ecosystem. Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon, and Reddit have all deployed tools similar to what X has built to create ads and automate campaigns.
X is counting on AI-driven tools to help reinvigorate its advertising business, which has sputtered since Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of the platform, then known as Twitter. Major brands, including Coca-Cola, Apple and Disney, cut spend over concerns about Musk’s lax approach to content moderation.
Though some advertisers are making their way back to the platform, X’s ad revenue has yet to fully recover. Its U.S. ad revenue came to approximately $1.4 billion in 2024, a 28% slide from the previous year, according to estimates from MediaRadar.
But X’s relationship with advertisers remains fraught. Earlier this month, X added a handful of additional brands — including Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Lego, Shell and others—to a lawsuit concerning an alleged advertising boycott of the platform.
However, there are also signs of remediation in other relationships. IPG, whose planned merger with Omnicom will establish the largest advertising holdco in the world, has signed a new annual deal with X for potential ad spending, according to a report Wednesday from The Wall Street Journal.
Now, X’s challenge will be to convince advertisers that its AI-powered tools can drive results without the brand safety concerns that led many to flee in the first place.
