Microsoft Corporation plans to drop Twitter from its advertising plan, but Elon Musk is not worried — because he is suiting up for a lawsuit.
On Thursday, responding to news that Microsoft is kicking Twitter from its advertising platform as they are refusing to pay the microblogging site’s exorbitantly high API access pricing, Musk said in a tweet, “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.”
The Twitter CEO further explained his reasoning behind the statement saying Microsoft mined the platform’s data illegally and trained its programs.
While announcing that Microsoft will drop Twitter from its advertising plan next week, the company said on its website, “Starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter.”
From April 25, users will no longer be able to access their Twitter account through Microsoft’s social management tool, create and manage tweets, view past engagements, or schedule tweets.
The tech giant added that other social media platforms like Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Instagram and Microsoft’s LinkedIn would remain available.
“I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution,” Musk said in a tweet.
It is possible that while accusing Microsoft of mining illegal Twitter data to train programs, Musk was referring to the company’s AI models.
While Musk did not present any proof to support his allegation of illegal training, his “lawsuit” statement came just as Reddit said it intends to charge for API access due to the use of its user-generated data for training AI models.
This isn’t the first time Musk and Microsoft have been at loggerheads. Last month, Musk accused Microsoft of gaining “exclusive access” to OpenAI’s entire codebase.
Neither Musk nor X Corp, a holdings’ company that now owns Twitter as a brand, have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft. The Seattle-based tech giant have yet to publicly confront Musk’s allegations as they may confront him if the lawsuit has been present.
In recent past, Musk has had tensions with other big tech executives following strained relationships including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI founder Sam Altman.
Microsoft has been a backer of OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, as it has invested $10 billion to develop the program. Musk was previously part of the OpenAI board member committee prior to his vocal concern of not regulating AI.
The new AI technology has been feared to take over jobs as it has been used in variety of forms from new users.
Musk voiced his concerns about the dangers of AI as possibility of the end of humanity if the system is not in check. He had decided to create his own AI platform called TruthGPT to counterweight ChatGPT.
The Twitter CEO sat down in an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson about the platform as a maximum truth-seeking AI platform.
Produced in association with Benzinga
