On April 19, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and Twitter, threatened to sue Microsoft for allegedly “illegally” training its artificial intelligence (AI) on twitter.
Musk’s tweet was in response to news that Microsoft planned to stop supporting Twitter on April 25 across its online social advertising tools, Smart Campaigns and Multi-platform.
Musk implied that Microsoft mined user tweets to train its AI-powered applications without authorization. He also accused Microsoft of “demonetizing” Twitter data by removing advertisements and selling the data to others.
While Microsoft did not explain its decision to end Twitter support, Wired reported in March that Twitter’s API fees had skyrocketed from $0 to $42,000 per month, with some cases exceeding $200,000 per month.
Microsoft’s decision means that its customers will lose access to their Twitter accounts through its tools and will no longer be able to create, manage, view, and schedule Tweets. Microsoft still provides access to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Academics, in particular, have been affected by the steep price increase, with more than 17,500 academic papers being based on Twitter data since 2020.
The software company is said to be developing its AI chips to power ChatGPT to deal with the rising development costs for in-house and OpenAI projects. According to Google Finance, with a market capitalization of $2.15 trillion, Microsoft is the world’s second-largest company, behind only Apple.
Microsoft’s decision to discontinue Twitter support comes a few months after Twitter stopped providing free access to the Twitter API for versions 1.1 and 2. As social media platforms increasingly become a source of data for AI training, concerns about privacy and data protection have been growing.
The dispute between Musk and Microsoft highlights the challenges that companies face in accessing and using social media data for AI applications and the importance of obtaining proper authorization.
Musk Threatens Microsoft Over Twitter AI Copying
In conclusion, the legal dispute between Elon Musk and Microsoft underscores the importance of ethical and legal considerations in the development and deployment of AI applications. As companies rely more on social media data for AI training, they need to ensure that they comply with data protection regulations and obtain proper authorization.
Moreover, social media platforms need to review their pricing policies to ensure that access to data is not restricted only to large corporations with deep pockets. As AI technology advances, regulatory frameworks and ethical guidelines will need to keep pace to ensure that AI applications are developed and used in a responsible and beneficial manner.