X Drops Video Editor While Meta Axes Studios for AI

X launched a built-in video editor for iOS with captions and green screen features, while Meta shut down multiple game studios to focus on AI-generated games via its new Pocket app. X's move empowers creators, whereas Meta's strategy replaces human developers with AI prompts, highlighting a divergence in platform priorities.

X just dropped a built-in video editor into its iOS app, giving everyday creators the kind of production tools Big Tech usually locks behind walled gardens — and it's another sign Elon Musk is building a communications infrastructure that serves users instead of harvesting them for advertisers. The new editor lets users record and edit video with overlay captions in multiple languages and a green screen feature, according to Engadget. X's head of product Nikita Bier posted that "one of our biggest priorities is to give creators the tools to create original content & reward those creators," adding that "we have plenty more updates coming to the video editor in the coming weeks." X has already reduced the visibility of reposts and content from other platforms, with Bier recommending users "record original videos with your own voice over." The platform recently added a video reaction function and set aside $1 million in payouts for live video streamers. This is what a platform looks like when it builds for the people on it. Contrast that with Meta. While X hands creators real production tools, Mark Zuckerberg's empire is torching actual game studios to push AI-generated novelties. Meta just launched "Pocket" on the Google Play Store, an app that lets users create small interactive games by typing prompts, Polygon reported. The app follows Meta's acquisition of Atma Science Inc., an AI startup founded by ex-Snapchat staff behind the viral app Gizmo. Here is what Meta sacrificed to get there. The company laid off workers at Reality Labs and shuttered multiple game studios it had acquired — Armature Studio Resident Evil 4 VR , Twisted Pixel, Sanzaru Games Asgard's Wrath , and Ready at Dawn Lone Echo — all closed down. These were studios making real games with real developers. Now Meta wants users to type a prompt and call it creativity. Reality Labs has hemorrhaged more than $70 billion since 2020. The pattern is clear. X builds tools that let people speak and create. Meta fires creators and replaces them with AI prompts, then funnels users into another algorithmic feed. One platform trusts its users. The other treats them as data inputs. There is a deeper stake. Both platforms depend on the same app store gatekeepers — Apple and Google — for distribution. Meta's Pocket launched only on Google Play. X's video editor hit iOS first, with Android reportedly on the way. These gatekeepers have already demonstrated willingness to deplatform apps that step out of line. Every tool X builds that makes users more self-sufficient is one more reason the censorship cartel will come looking for leverage. The question is not whether X can keep building. It is whether Apple and Google will let the platform compete on a level playing field — or decide that a free-speech infrastructure with its own creator economy is too dangerous to leave alone.