Twitter Accuses Microsoft of Data Usage Violations

Elon Musk, accused Microsoft of using "unauthorized" Twitter data. (photo: screenshot of elon musk and bbc interviews)

JAKARTA - Twitter Inc claims that Microsoft Corp has violated the agreement regarding the use of the social media company's data. This was revealed according to a letter seen by Reuters on Thursday, May 18.

Twitter owner Elon Musk, through his lawyers, accused Microsoft of "unauthorized" use of Twitter data, including sharing data with government agencies without permission in some cases.

In a letter addressed to Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, asked the technology company to conduct an audit of the use of Twitter content. The letter was first reported by the New York Times.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Pursuant to Twitter's agreement, the social media company imposes usage restrictions on its application programming interface (API) for all developers.

"Despite these limitations, Microsoft Apps accessed the Twitter API more than 780 million times and retrieved more than 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone," the letter read.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company last Thursday received a letter from a law firm representing Twitter with questions about its previous use of Twitter's free API.

"We will review these questions and provide appropriate responses. We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with the company," the spokesperson said.

The Twitter indictment comes at a time when Elon Musk is at odds with Microsoft over its artificial intelligence platform.

Musk announced last April that he would launch an artificial intelligence platform "TruthGPT" to challenge the services offered by Microsoft and Google.

He has criticized Microsoft-backed OpenAI, the company behind chatbot success ChatGPT, for "training artificial intelligence to lie" and stated that OpenAI is now a "closed source" and "for profit" organization that is "closely allied with Microsoft".

Musk has also accused Larry Page, co-founder of Google, of not taking artificial intelligence security concerns seriously.