Elon Musk continues to make friends at Twitter, the social network he bought last October for $44 billion and renamed X Corp. (bye-bye, Twitter Inc.). His new “idea”? Threaten to sue Microsoft, claiming that it “illegally trained using Twitter data”.
Musk’s threat comes in response to a publication announcing that Microsoft would stop supporting Twitter on its advertising platform following changes made to the social network that require a payment of $42,000 per month from all those who want to use its API.
On its support page, Microsoft says it will “stop supporting Twitter” as of April 25, 2023. This means that companies will no longer be able to make use of Microsoft’s advertising platform in order to manage their tweets or view statistics on their posts.
With his statement, Elon Musk seems to be referring to OpenAI‘s alleged use of Twitter data for the purpose of training its AIs, such as the popular ChatGPT. In other words, Musk is quick to assume that Microsoft owns or is responsible for OpenAI, when, for all practical purposes, it is just a major investor in the company.
However, it is important to remember that Musk is a barking dog with little bite, and more so in his public announcements of lawsuits. One of the most notorious cases of this style was that of the creator of the famous Twitter account @ElonJet, who published a tweet every time Musk used his private plane (public information). Despite Musk’s threat to sue him, in the end it all came to… nothing.
With the prices imposed by Musk for companies to access its API or to acquire the yellow verified, many companies will be forced to give up in the coming months, especially the smaller ones. A serious problem for Musk if he wants his platform to have a good brand image and be profitable in the long term.
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