A lawyer for Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, accused Microsoft of exploiting the service’s data and he ordered an investigation.
The letter mostly discusses a seemingly small number of alleged transgressions by Microsoft when extracting data from Twitter’s tweet database. However, the action might portend more significant events. In a recent tweet, Musk charged Microsoft and its partner OpenAI with “illegally” utilizing Twitter data to create complex AI systems like ChatGPT.
It was “Lawsuit time,” Musk tweeted in April.
However, the letter, which was signed by Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro, skirted that issue. It mentioned that Microsoft’s contract with Twitter forbade it from using the service’s data excessively, such as by making more requests than “reasonable volume” or “excessive or abusive usage.” Spiro continued by saying that “despite these limitations,” Microsoft had nonetheless managed to extract more than 26 billion tweets in just 2022.
He did not explain the significance of those figures. Huge amounts of data, including written text, are needed to train AI systems. AI algorithms mine this text for patterns that they can use to understand language and vast amounts of knowledge.
In other ways, the letter mostly consisted of a list of ambiguous accusations. For example, it pointed out that although Microsoft was supposed to notify Twitter about its intended use of the data, it did not do so for six of the eight Microsoft programs that used the Twitter database.
In addition, the letter claimed that at least one Microsoft program had given Twitter data to several online places that “reference a government entity or agency.” According to the letter, that appeared to be in violation of Microsoft’s contract with Twitter, which forbade the business from obtaining Twitter data “on behalf of ‘any government-related entity'” without first informing Twitter.
According to the letter, Microsoft had not given this notification.
According to a statement from Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw, the company will consider the issues mentioned by the letter before “responding appropriately.” The statement continued, “We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership” with Twitter, while it made no specific mention of the social media platform by name. Shaw declined to comment on the letter’s specifics.
In Spiro’s letter, Microsoft was required to provide specifics regarding the Twitter data it now has or has previously destroyed the reason behind each of its programs that utilized Twitter data, any government organizations using these Microsoft apps, and whether they obtained data from Twitter’s database.
