Twitter has accused Microsoft of violating an agreement regarding the use of the social media company’s data. In a letter addressed to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Elon Musk’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, alleged that Microsoft engaged in “unauthorized” usage of Twitter’s data, including sharing data with government agencies without permission in some cases.
Spiro requested that Microsoft conduct an audit of its use of Twitter’s content. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
These accusations come when Elon Musk is at odds with Microsoft over its AI platform. According to Twitter’s agreement, the social media company enforces rate limits on the use of its application programming interface (API) for all developers. However, the letter stated that “despite these limitations, the Microsoft apps accessed Twitter’s APIs over 780 million times and retrieved over 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone.
A Microsoft spokesman stated that the company received questions from a law firm representing Twitter on Thursday regarding its previous use of the free Twitter APIs. The spokesman said that Microsoft would review these questions and respond appropriately, adding that the company looks forward to continuing its long-term partnership with Twitter.
These accusations come when Elon Musk is at odds with Microsoft over its artificial intelligence platform. In April, Musk announced that he would launch the AI platform TruthGPT to challenge the offerings from Microsoft and Google.
Musk has criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the firm behind chatbot sensation ChatGPT, for “training the AI to lie.” He has also accused OpenAI of becoming a “closed source,” “for-profit” organization that is “closely allied with Microsoft.” Additionally, Musk has accused Google co-founder Larry Page of not taking AI safety seriously.