What Elon Musk said in spontaneous interview

Twitter CEO Elon Musk. [AP]

Twitter Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk did not mince words when he appeared in a surprise interview on the BBC on Wednesday, April 12.

Question and concern after the other, Musk put to bed some topics that have been trending on the social platform for weeks, while leaving his audience with more questions than answers on others.

The Twitter Chief Executive said that there has to be a line when it comes to hate speech even as everyone enjoys their freedom of speech.

"When you come to the Twitter space and start to advocate for murdering someone, that is illegal. such hateful remarks should be stopped and that is why there has to be a limit to hate speech."

"However, as we work on taming misinformation and setting clear policies to help stop that, the media should stop referring to the site as 'not safe' as before," said Musk.

His remarks come after American publication the New York Times published an article in December 2022 that claimed hate speech and problematic content have increased sharply after Musk took over Twitter.

"Before Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter's owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day."

Musk however defended himself saying that he has done a lot to ensure that the social platform is a safe space for everyone.

"Sometimes I sleep at the office working and pushing for change. The last several months have been very stressful but all is well...I feel like we are heading to a good place," he said.

The Tesla CEO also acknowledged that he has made mistakes when it comes to running the application and creating controversial tweets.

"Have I shot myself in the foot with tweets multiple times? Yes. Were there mistakes made along the way? Of course. I have no regrets about buying Twitter but the pain level of running it has been extremely high and that is why I think I should not tweet after 3 am or maybe 2 am no one should tweet while they are stressed, overwhelmed, or upset about something," he said.

One of the changes that Musk is pushing for is the need to have a regulatory body for Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Last month, Musk was among key figures who called for the training of powerful AI systems to be suspended amid fears of a threat to humanity.

The Twitter boss maintained his stand saying that: 'There should be a regulatory body to make sure AI does not present danger to the public."

Artificial Intelligence is responsible for managing tweets that appear on Twitter users' feeds, something that Musk says that there has to be a body that will help manage and control AI.

Musk also revealed that he is no longer the CEO of Twitter but his pet dog Floki is. This explains why on some twitter pages the bird icon has been replaced by a dog.