Musk feuds with Microsoft after it drops Twitter from advertising platform

Baku, April 20, AZERTAC

Twitter CEO Elon Musk Wednesday threatened to sue Microsoft, accusing the software giant of “illegally” using data from the social media platform, hours after Microsoft dropped Twitter from its online advertising platform, according to Forbes.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mashable and other outlets reported that Microsoft was removing Twitter integration from its advertising platform, which allows brands to manage all their social media feeds from a single dashboard.

From April 25, Microsoft Digital Marketing Center users will no longer be able to access their Twitter feeds, make or schedule new posts from its “Smart Campaigns” tool, the company said in a notice, although access to Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn will continue to remain available.

Although Microsoft did not specify a reason, reports suggest Twitter’s plan to charge enterprises for accessing its API—which allows third parties to integrate Twitter services—may have played a role, with fees starting at $42,000 a month.

Responding to a news report about Microsoft’s move, Musk tweeted “lawsuit time,” vaguely accusing Microsoft of “illegally using Twitter data” for training—presumably referring OpenAI’s GPT language model that powers Microsoft’s AI services.

When one user pushed Musk about the negative impact of Twitter’s steep API fees, the Twitter CEO responded by saying he was open to ideas but did not approve of Microsoft’s approach of allegedly “ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others.”

Musk did not share any evidence to support his allegations and OpenAI’s ChatGPT—which has been integrated into Microsoft’s Bing search engine and other services—does not disclose the source of its training data.