The owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, threatens to sue Microsoft for using data from the social network without permission to train its artificial intelligence model.

The controversy surrounding the use of personal data in the development of artificial intelligence has resurfaced after the accusations of the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, against Microsoft. According to Musk, Microsoft would have used Twitter to collect information from users without their authorization and would have used that data to train its artificial intelligence models.

The controversy began after Microsoft announced that the app Twitter would no longer be available through its advertising platform, Smart Campaigns with cross-platform, starting April 25, 2023.

Given this, Musk responded through his Twitter profile. with a direct accusation: “trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time“.

It is important to remember that Microsoft creates its own language models (LLM) and also sells access to OpenAI models. Last year, Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI in an unusually structured deal.

“Stealing the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others is not a winning solution”, Musk has declared. However, the employer has left the door open to new ideas regarding the use of personal data for training artificial intelligence models.

Elon Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, but resigned in 2018. Musk recently expressed his dissatisfaction with the company’s decision to move from a non-profit model to a Microsoft-influenced business and has announced his intention to create his own chat bot to compete with OpenAI.

Twitter data is used by many AI companies

Using Twitter data to train AI models is common in the industry, but it’s important to make sure that the guidelines are followed. privacy policies and get the user consent before using your data. At the moment, Microsoft has not issued any official statement on Musk’s accusations.

The protection of privacy and user rights They are increasingly relevant topics. If Elon Musk decides to follow through on his threatened lawsuit, it could have significant consequences for Microsoft and the AI ​​industry in general.

Conversational AIs, such as chatGPT, they require terabytes of data for their training, many of which are sourced from websites like Reddit, StackOverflow, or Twitter. Twitter data is of great value to artificial intelligence algorithms, as it is based on real, informal conversations between people.