(Image source from: x.com/XFreeze)

Elon Musk has now launched X Chat, a new complete messaging system, on X (formerly Twitter). The platform's owner and CTO announced on Thursday that Chat was being tested and offered to a small group of users. This new feature combines with and takes the place of Direct Messages (DM), the platform's long-standing way for people to talk to each other. It includes features like full encryption, sending files, and messages that disappear. Musk posted, "X just launched a whole new communication system with encrypted messages, audio/video calls, and file transfer." This is after he said last month that X Chat would be its own separate app. That hasn't happened, but users can now find the feature inside the social media app.

Encryption was a major focus for Chat. Right now, DMs aren't encrypted automatically, though paying users can choose to have an encrypted chat in another section. Chat gets rid of this separation by making all conversations fully encrypted in one place. Even messages that weren't encrypted before this change will now be secure.

In the past, this feature was similar to Signal and WhatsApp. Users who get this update will first need to make a four-number secret code for Chat. They can only see their messages after they set this up. Then, each time they open the chat, they will have to put in this secret code. Many X users have complained because they need to enter this code every time they want to answer a message. Christopher Park, who is in charge of the X Developer Platform, said in another message that the company has recently released new things like Grokipedia, X Chat, and a test version of X API. Also, they plan to soon release a big update for Grok Imagine that will let videos be up to 15 seconds long, X Money, and an X feed completely run by Grok.