Elon Musk Replaces X DMs With New Encrypted Chat Feature Supporting Large File Transfers

Elon Musk has finally started rolling out X Chat, a new full-stack communication product, on X (formerly known as Twitter). On Thursday, the Chief Technical Officer and the owner of the social media platform announced that Chat was being integrated in beta and was being made available to a small subset of users. The feature merges with and replaces Direct Messages (DM), the longstanding peer-to-peer communication channel of the platform. It comes with several features such as fully end-to-end encryption, file transfer, and vanishing messages.

X Chat Released in Beta: Features and Details

In a post, Musk said, “X just rolled out an entire new communications stack with encrypted messages, audio/video calls and file transfer.” This comes after he said last month that X Chat will be released as a standalone platform. That has not happened yet, but users can now access the feature within the social media platform.

A big focus on Chat was encryption. Currently, DMs are not encrypted by default, although paid subscribers can go to a separate tab to have an encrypted conversation. Chat eliminates this bifurcation by creating a single fully-encrypted layer for all conversations. Even the messages that were not encrypted before the shift will now be protected. Musk has compared the encryption capability with the likes of Signal and Meta-owned WhatsApp in the past.

Those users who receive this upgrade will first be asked to create a four-digit PIN for Chat. Only after setting it up will they be able to access their messages. After that, every time they open the interface, they will have to type the PIN code. Several X users have highlighted their frustrations with this second layer of authentication every time they want to reply to a message.

Christopher Park, the Head of X Developer Platform, highlighted in a separate post that the company has launched several new products, such as Grokipedia, X Chat, and X API beta, in recent weeks. Additionally, it is also planning to release a major upgrade to Grok Imagine with video duration of up to 15 seconds, X Money, and a fully Grok-powered X feed soon.