Musk Is Back In The Headlines After Threatening To Sue Microsoft For Using Twitter Data Without Authorization.

Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, reportedly threatened to sue Satya Nadella’s Microsoft on allegations that the business “trained illegally using Twitter data.” Musk reacted when Microsoft allegedly refused to pay Twitter’s application programming interface (API) costs, causing the company to withdraw Twitter from its advertising platform. His comment is likely in response to Microsoft-owned OpenAI purportedly utilising Twitter data to train the colossal language model for ChatGPT, an AI chatbot.

Microsoft is planning to compromise its ties with Musk.

Microsoft did not respond to Musk’s warning. Instead, the tech giant said on its help page for Microsoft’s advertising platform that it will “no longer support Twitter” as of April 25. According to the announcement, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no longer support Twitter from April 25, 2023. As a result, advertisers could not access their Twitter accounts using Microsoft’s social management platform.

The notification said that users could not access their Twitter account using our social management tool, create and manage draughts or Tweets, examine past tweets and interactions, or schedule Tweets. Other social networking platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn will remain open.

The role of the hefty amount that Mr Musk demands.

Companies like Microsoft may pay as much as $42,000 monthly to access the Twitter API under Twitter’s new pricing scheme. Some smaller developers, such as Tweetbot producer Tapbots, have already abandoned the platform due to the new price mechanism.

In a subsequent tweet, Mr Musk stated that he was “open to ideas” about the social media platform’s data. But pulling off the Twitter database, demonetising it (removing ads), and then selling its contents to others isn’t a winning solution, he continued. Mr Musk’s Twitter began charging for the data it gathers from hundreds of millions of users in February, with a basic package starting at $100 monthly. According to the company, the data allows users to manage and track every aspect of their social media presence.

What made Musk think about suing the tech giant Microsoft?

Musk appears to threaten Microsoft-backed AI business OpenAI for utilising Twitter data to train the enormous language model underpinning products like ChatGPT. Microsoft creates its large language models (LLMs) and licences OpenAI’s models. In recent months, the corporation has made considerable investments in OpenAI and is incorporating AI into products such as Bing, Edge, and Microsoft 365. 

However, LLMs like GPT require terabytes of data for training, much of which is collected from sites such as Reddit, StackOverflow, and Twitter. Experts feel that training data from social networks makes far more sense since it captures casual, back-and-forth talks. 

Are there any other instances of similar incidences where one company is alleged of using another company’s data?

As the demand for these new AI models grows, these platforms charge the businesses that use them. For example, Reddit said earlier this week that it would charge businesses for access to its programming interface, which is used to feed Redditors’ chats into AI training tools.   Meanwhile, Getty Images filed a lawsuit against Stable Diffusion in February, saying that the business duplicated its content to train its AI picture generator. Musk revealed earlier this week that he intends to construct his own huge language model in one of his firms called TruthGPT, which would be “a maximum truth-seeking AI” And would put Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet’s (Google) Bard AI to the test. 

The present situation and fate of Twitter.

Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion (£35.4 billion) in October, Mr Musk has reduced its employment by around 80% and taken steps to bolster the company’s profits, including charging users for “blue tick” verification. In recent months, prominent corporations, including iPhone manufacturer Apple, have allegedly suspended advertising on the platform due to worries over how material on the site was controlled. Mr Musk stated in November that Twitter had experienced a “massive” reduction in income and blamed it on campaigners pressing advertisers. Mr Musk also stated that Twitter might be profitable by the Q2 of 2023 and that he would be happy to sell the firm to the appropriate buyer.