The billionaire spoke onstage at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity about advertising, artificial intelligence and more
Seven months after declaring that advertisers pulling their ads from his social-media platform X could “go f— yourself,” Elon Musk took a more congenial tone onstage at the advertising industry’s most important annual festival.
Musk joined Mark Read, chief executive of ad giant WPP, in a session Wednesday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, a five-day event that draws thousands of the industry’s chief marketing officers, tech leaders, creative workers and others from around the world.
“Back in November, you had a message to us. You told us to go f— ourselves,” Read said. “Why did you say that? And what did you mean by that?”
Musk said that he had not intended the message for advertisers as a whole.
“It was with respect to freedom of speech,” he said. “Advertisers have a right to appear next to content that they find compatible with their brands. That’s totally fine…What is not cool is insisting that there can be no content that they disagree with on the platform.”
X in November was grappling with the departure of several large advertisers in the wake of a post by the billionaire describing a post that espoused an antisemitic conspiracy theory as “the actual truth.”
Musk later that month called the advertisers’ response “blackmail” and said the advertising boycott was “going to kill the company.” He also said he had tried to clarify after his post that he hadn’t meant anything antisemitic.
X owner Elon Musk and WPP CEO Mark Read talk on stage at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, an annual global gathering for the ad industry. PHOTO: CANNES LIONS 2024, GETTY IMAGES
In Cannes on Wednesday, Musk also said that the company has worked to overhaul its abilities to match its users with ads using AI.
For advertisers who haven’t been on the platform but might be mulling a return, Musk said he believed it was “worth trying out.”
“We are very focused on having ads be shown to people who would find the ad interesting,” he said. “That is something we have done and are making a lot of progress on.”
He added that the platform still sees activity from the likes of world leaders.
“If you’re trying to reach senior decision makers, if you want to reach the most influential people in the world…the X platform is by far the best,” he said.
Musk and Read also spoke about the future of AI as it pertains to creativity.
Musk said his company Neuralink aspires to enhance human intelligence so that people can keep up with AI. “It will certainly amplify creativity,” he said.