Twitter boss Elon Musk has given an unexpected interview to a BBC journalist.
Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX agreed to the last-minute conversation with BBC correspondent James Clayton at Twitter HQ on Monday evening.
He told Clayton that he only took over Twitter because “he had to” and that running the company has been “quite painful.”
When asked if he had any regrets over buying Twitter. Musk said that the “pain level has been extremely high, this hasn’t been some kind of party”.
He added that it has been “really quite a stressful situation over the last several months,” but said that buying the company was the “right thing to do.”
“Were there many mistakes made a long the way? Of course. But all’s well that ends well, I feel like we’re headed to a good place,” he told Clayton.
Musk was then asked about how many people he has sacked since buying Twitter.
He said that when he bought the company there were “just under 8,000” staff members, and now there are “1,500”.
Asked if it’s hard to fire that many people, Musk said it’s “not fun at all” and can, at times, be “painful”.
He told the BBC reporter that he doesn’t fire everyone in person
“It’s not possible to talk with that many people face to face,” he said.
The conversation turned to AI and the use of that technology in deep fakes and the creation of fake news and fake videos involving politicians like US President Joe Biden.
Musk said the advent of such technology made “trying to figure out what’s real is really hard”.
He added that at Twitter: “We’re going to be very focused in figuring out what’s real and if not real – trying to address it.”
He did not provide any examples of how Twitter might try and achieve that.
He also argued that for breaking news “If you want real time in news, this is the best place, it’s Twitter”.
