Prelude to a lawsuit? Musk sent a lawyer's letter to Microsoft accusing them of abusing Twitter data

Musk's lawyer, Alex Spiro, wrote to Microsoft on Thursday, accusing the company of abusing Twitter data and demanding that the software giant conduct an audit.

This letter is mainly aimed at a series of seemingly limited violations by Microsoft suspected of obtaining information from Twitter's Twitter database. But this move may herald more serious developments. Musk previously accused Microsoft and its partner OpenAI on Twitter of "illegally" using Twitter data to develop complex artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT, and threatened to file a lawsuit.

But this letter signed by Spiro evaded this concern. The letter pointed out that Microsoft's agreement with Twitter prohibits excessive use of the platform's data, such as exceeding "reasonable requests" or "excessive or abusive use". Spiro later pointed out that "despite these limitations," Microsoft retrieved over 26 billion tweets in 2022 alone.

He did not provide the background for these numbers. The process of training artificial intelligence systems requires a large amount of data, such as written text, from which artificial intelligence algorithms search for patterns that can be used by artificial intelligence to understand language and a large amount of knowledge.

In other aspects, this letter mainly lists a series of vaguely worded allegations. For example, the letter pointed out that although Microsoft was required to inform Twitter of its intended use of data, six out of eight Microsoft applications that utilized Twitter database information did not do so.

Similarly, the letter claims that at least one Microsoft application provided Twitter data to some virtual locations that referred to government entities or institutions. The letter stated that this clearly violates the agreement between Microsoft and Twitter, which prohibits Microsoft from "representing 'any government related entity' to retrieve Twitter data without prior notice to Twitter.

This letter states that Microsoft did not provide such notification.

Microsoft spokesperson Frank Shaw issued a statement stating that Microsoft will review the issues raised in this letter and then "make appropriate responses". The statement also said, 'We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership,' but did not mention Twitter's name.

In his letter, Spero requested Microsoft to provide a detailed description of the Twitter data it owns or has destroyed, the purpose of each application that utilizes Twitter information, any government entities that use these Microsoft applications, and whether they receive data from Twitter's database.

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