Screenshot / X, Gail Alfar ; Screenshot / X, Elon Musk ; Screenshot / X, Neuralink, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

On Friday evening, the first man to receive a Neuralink implant successfully wrote and sent the first post on X that was written using only his mind. 

Noland Arbaugh, a quadriplegic who was the first human subject of the Neuralink implant, posted on X for the first time on March 22, writing, “Twitter banned me because they thought I was a bot, @X and [Elon Musk] reinstated me because I am.”

The post was quoted by Musk, who added, “First ever post made just by thinking, using the @Neuralnk Telepathy device!”

Arbaugh has been in the news recently as more videos of him utilizing the Neuralink device have begun gaining traction on social media. On Wednesday, a video of Arbaugh using the device to play chess digitally went viral after he was featured in a Neuralink livestream on X. 

“It was like using the force,” he said.

The 29-year-old Arbaugh has been paralyzed from the shoulders down since 2016, after he was the victim of a freak diving accident. 

“I'm paralyzed from below the shoulders. I have no sensation or movement below my level of injury, so below my shoulders,” Arbaugh said in the livestream.

In the video, Arbaugh said he loved playing chess but it hasn't been able to since his accident, explaining, “Now it's all being done with my brain. You can see the cursor moving around the screen, that's all me.”

Arbaugh said that he used to be an avid gamer, and that Neuralink has given him the ability to play games again, including Civilization 6, which he played for eight hours straight.

“I had basically given up on playing that game,” he said. “I just wasn't really able to play it as much as I wanted to and you all gave me that ability again.”

During the livestream, Arbaugh said he had no issues following his widely publicized surgery in January, when he became the first human to receive a Neuralink device. 

“The surgery was super easy,” Arbaugh said in the livestream. “I literally was released from the hospital a day later. I have no cognitive impairments.”

He acknowledged that the technology is “not perfect” and they “have run into some issues.”

“I don't want people to think this is the end of a journey because there are things to work out, but it's already changed my life,” he said.