Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks to CNBC on May 16, 2023.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Twitter has accused Microsoft of using the social media company’s data in an unauthorized and never-disclosed manner.
Alex Spiro, a partner at Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart & Sullivan and an attorney for Twitter owner Elon Musk, wrote to Microsoft on Thursday, citing “several clauses” in the contract with Microsoft. It may have been violated,” he said. Twitter about data usage.
It’s the latest rift between tech companies amid growing debate over who owns data that can be used to train artificial intelligence and machine-learning software. The letter was first reported by The New York Times, and a copy was obtained by CNBC.
After Musk led the acquisition of Twitter in October and named himself CEO, the company launched an application programming interface that allows developers to embed tweets in their software and services, as well as access Twitter data. API) usage fee.
The API was previously free to use by select researchers, partners and developers who agreed to Twitter’s terms. Twitter API-driven apps include Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Sprinklr.
According to Spiro’s letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the company’s board of directors, last month Microsoft “will continue to provide access to Twitter’s API and content, even at a discounted rate. I refused to pay,” he said.
As of April, Spiro wrote that Microsoft had at least five products using the Twitter API, including the Azure cloud, the Bing search engine, and the Power Platform low-code application development tool.
This agreement limits excessive use of Twitter’s programming interfaces. However, for one Microsoft service that uses Twitter data, “the account information clearly states that the customer intends to allow the customer to ‘circumvent throttling limits,'” Spiro said. writes.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the letter and told CNBC that the company will review the letter and “respond appropriately.”
“Today, we received several questions from the law firm representing Twitter regarding our past use of the free Twitter API,” a spokesperson said in an email. “We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with the company.”
Musk has publicly criticized Microsoft’s close relationship with OpenAI, the creator of the chatbot ChatGPT. Musk was an early backer of OpenAI, which has since raised billions of dollars from Microsoft and built its AI technology into many of its core products.
“Microsoft has a very strong say, if not direct control, over OpenAI at this point,” Musk said in an interview with CNBC this week. Nadella recently disputed Musk’s claims in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, saying Microsoft had a “non-controlling interest” in the startup.
Spiro did not name OpenAI or mention its ChatGPT, DALL-E applications, or large language models in the letter. He asked Microsoft for details about “a description of the token pooling implemented in any Microsoft app, such as how long the token pooling occurred and how many tokens were pooled.” I was.
Musk and Nadella recently had another exchange.
Musk reached out to Nadella last year as he was raising money to buy Twitter, according to text messages released through court filings. In a text to Musk, Nadella wrote, “I will definitely follow up on feedback from Teams!” Teams is Microsoft’s chat app.
You can read the full text of Twitter’s letter to Microsoft here.
