Community-Driven API and AI Writer Design for Openly Scaling Community Notes

Abstract:Community Notes is a crowd-sourced approach for adding context to posts on X. Contributors propose and rate notes, forming the inputs to an open-source, open-data algorithm that determines which notes show broadly to users. Since September 2025, Community Notes' AI Note Writer API has provided an open, public interface for using AI to propose notes, while adhering to the founding principle that users, not the platform or an AI, control which notes show on X. Explicit note requests and user posts on X determine the AI API post feeds, ensuring that AI note writing responds to demand from X users. We present the design, operation and impact of the AI API, including analysis of the interaction between AI and human generated notes across topics. Unless otherwise stated, measurements and system description reflect June 2-29, 2026. The Community Writer is the largest AI API client and contributes the bulk of AI API output, generating 52% of notes selected as Helpful and shown broadly on X. The writer is guided by community input during both training and operation to prioritize, draft, evaluate and delete proposed notes. Beyond scale, the writer also offers speed, submitting the first proposed, non-deleted note on 60% of posts when compared to other writers. AI note writing is additive on top of human note writers, extending coverage of Community Notes on X. Among posts that have Helpful notes, 42% have only AI notes, indicating human raters did not feel motivated to propose an alternative. In contrast, 30% have only human notes, reflecting contribution beyond the scope of AI writing. The Community Writer is open-source software released under the Apache 2.0 license.

Social and Information Networks (cs.SI); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2609.40067 [cs.SI]

(or arXiv:2609.40067v1 [cs.SI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.40067 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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