KEY POINTS
- Musk says Microsoft has been using data from his social media platform without consent
- “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” he tweeted
- This comes after Microsoft removes Twitter from its ad platform
Microsoft has announced its social media planning and scheduling tools for advertisers will no longer support Twitter, after the social media giant imposed charges for access to its programming interface. Notably, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, is irked by the decision.
Microsoft’s advertising clientele will not have access to their Twitter accounts from April 25 and they can’t run Smart Campaigns on the social media platform, the company announced Wednesday. It didn’t reveal the reason for the decision. Microsoft’s Smart Campaigns service allows advertisers to manage their social media campaigns on various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Twitter introduced its paid plans for API access on March 30. The company reportedly plans to make businesses pay between $42,000 and $210,000 monthly to utilize its application programming interface (API), which is used by third-party developers to access data from applications.
It appears Microsoft wants to opt out of paying the API access fee, following in the footsteps of other companies.
“They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” Elon Musk tweeted Wednesday, claiming Microsoft used his company’s data to train its artificial intelligence model.
They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023
Through the new API pricing, the billionaire, who acquired Twitter last year, is intending to impose a policy modification that will make businesses pay a fee for accessing its data stream.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is heavily investing in ChatGTP developer OpenAI, a company that Elon Musk once co-founded before parting ways with the team in 2018.
It is reported that Musk is now working on creating his own rival AI initiative.
“I’m going to start something which I call ‘TruthGPT’, or a maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe,” Musk said in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
Following on the heels of Twitter, online discussion platform Reddit on Wednesday announced it will begin charging firms for using its API.
“As a platform with one of the largest corpus of human-to-human conversations online, spanning the past 18 years, we have an obligation to our communities to be stewards of this content,” Reddit said.
