Elon Musk Threatens to Sue Microsoft After it Drops Twitter From Ad Platform

Microsoft is dropping Twitter from one of its advertising platforms—and Elon Musk isn’t happy. 

Microsoft quietly announced(Opens in a new window) the removal of Twitter support from the company’s Smart Campaigns advertising platform, according(Opens in a new window) to Mashable. This means Microsoft advertising clients won’t be able access their Twitter accounts or create and publish tweets through Smart Campaigns starting on April 25.   

Redmond didn’t explain why it’s winding down the support. But Twitter reportedly wants(Opens in a new window) to charge companies from $42,000 to as much as $210,000 per month for access to the company’s API, which can allow third-party apps to interface with the social media service. 

So it looks like Microsoft has joined others in declining(Opens in a new window) to pay the new API access fee. In response, Musk is threatening legal action. The reason? Twitter’s CEO is alleging Microsoft mined Twitter’s data, such as user tweets, to help train Microsoft’s AI-powered programs. Now he’s demanding compensation.

“They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” Musk said in a tweet(Opens in a new window).

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

Musk didn’t provide any evidence for the illegal training, although programs such as ChatGPT were trained on public internet data, such as Wikipedia articles. However, Musk made his comment right as rival social media platform Reddit announced plans to charge(Opens in a new window) for API access, citing how Reddit user-generated data is being used to train AI models. 

Musk also has a beef with Microsoft, which has become the major partner for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Although Musk helped found OpenAI, he’s since been blasting the San Francisco-based lab as a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft.” 

At the same time, he’s criticized ChatGPT for allegedly spouting misinformation, propaganda, and promoting political correctness. So in response, Musk says he plans on countering(Opens in a new window) OpenAI and Microsoft with his own AI chatbot program, which will be called TruthGPT. 

Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.