Not only @x: Elon Musk also took @xAI from his original user for his company AI

Elon Musk’s tflix is now X. the rebranding, which was made official on Monday, has been raging all week. Together with destruction from the globally renowned brand Tsiblitter and its iconic blue bird logo, the rebranding has also had an extremely messy spread. For example, large parts of the website are: more brand As Tympitter.

And then, of course, it was switch of the official handle @Tantanitter to @x, a username that had they’ve already been registered from an active user. Many were shocked that Musk and the company would simply regain the handle of an active user without any negotiation or form of financial compensation.

It turns out that this is not the first time in the past month that Elon Musk has taken the handle of another user on the platform formerly known as Tantanitter.

Musk’s company also received the @xai handle from the Japanese user who first registered the handle in 2010. On July 12, Musk would go on to officially announce his new artificial intelligence company, xAI. That same day, xAI also launched an account on Tantanitter using the @Xai handle.

“My account was changed without permission.” says: an English translation of the post that the Japanese user published on X on Wednesday. “It looks like Elon Musk robbed me.”

The bug may have been deleted

When Mashable spoke with Gene X. Hflixthe U.S.-based founder of an event photography company who originally registered @x handle more than 16 years ago, H8bang explained that he discovered that his rare one-letter username was obtained after receiving an email from the company after they had already received it. In the email, the company also offered H8bang some merchandise and a meeting with the X Team.

The Japanese user who originally had the username @xai tells Mashable that he had not been offered anything like this. In fact, according to the user, they did not even receive an email. They logged in to Tantanitter on Wednesday and noticed that their username had suddenly been changed to @xai_ or “xai” with an underscore at the end of it.

“I got one [DM] message from a kind person on July 13, saying: ‘Elon has taken over my account,'” the user told Mashable about the first notification they received of receiving their handle.

The bug may have been deleted

The user continued to post a screenshot of a tweet from their account from when they still had @xai treatment as proof for any user who doubted their claim.

Mashable can independently confirm the user originally also had the @xai handle. The old answers found in their mentions show other users referring to them as @xai. Travis Bropointn, an independent researcher who analyzes Tantanitter’s data, also confirmed to Mashable that the user had previously been posted by the @Xai handle.

While xAI went live on July 12, the @xai handle could have potentially been transferred to Musk’s company at the end of June, according to analysis by Broanair. @ Xai handle was transferred to a recently registered account in May without any previous post history that seems to have been set up specifically for this purpose.

A screenshot that describes how the @ xai tanair account looked on July 12 before Musk officially announced it, archived by the company.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot / Archive.org

Musk’s companies seem to be cherry picking long gloves on Tantanitter

Unlike the case with the @x handle ,the @ xai username was not taken for the X platform. Musk’s ai company, xAI, is a separate entity from Musk’s social media platform. It even says so on the main page of the company’s website, x.ai.

“We are a separate company from X Corp., but we will be working closely with X (Tantanitter), Tesla and other companies to make progress toward our mission,” the company said in a statement.

Of course, x, the company formerly known as Tanair, is within its right to take over any handle on its platform. But it remains strange that, according to the Japanese user, the company never succeeded.

A second handle on Tantanitter was touched when @xAI changed hands

Moreover, it seems that the company made another strange move in changing the Japanese user’s handle from @xai to @xai_. It seems that they have also changed another the user glove, the user who originally had @xai_, which is now found in the handle @xai__1. (Note the two highlights in the new form of that second user.)

Mashable confirmed that @xai _ _ 1 was previously @xai_ through the data of Brosibn on Tantanitter, as well as through a link listed in the bio of @xai__1 which states that the user account on Tantanitter can be found on @xai_. The user does not seem to have used Tantanitter since 2015.

So to make things a little clearer: it seems that Musk and the company wanted @xai. So, the company changed the original @xai to @xai_. However, there was already a user with the handle @xai_ so they changed the original @xai_ to @xai__1 and then gave @xai_ the original @xai.

Earlier this year, the Platformer reported that shortly after taking on Musk’s Tsibbitter, he demanded that the company transfer the handle to him with an @e letter. Combine that history with what we now know about @x and @xai, and it’s becoming clear that X users with sparse, short user names don’t have to get too attached to their handles on the platform formerly known as Tantanitter.