Elon Musk, owner of Twitter, has threatened to take legal action, alleging that Microsoft illegally trained its AI models on Twitter data
Next week, Microsoft will remove Twitter from its advertising platform, almost two months after Twitter revealed its plan to charge a minimum of $42,000 per month to users of its API, which include businesses and research organisations.
According to Wired, the new pricing scheme "prices out almost
everyone," and users received emails about the pricing details in early
March.
Despite Microsoft's $2.15 trillion market capitalisation
and roughly $100 billion cash reserves at the end of last year, the company
has chosen to remove Twitter from its advertising platform, Tech Crunch
reported.
Although it is unclear why Microsoft made this
decision, it appears to be a statement. The company has only stated that
"Starting on April 25, 2023, Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform will no
longer support Twitter," and "Digital Marketing Centre (DMC) will no longer
support Twitter starting on April 25, 2023."
Microsoft is set to drop Twitter from its advertising platform
next week due to Twitter's pricing changes. In March, Twitter revealed a
pricing scheme that would charge a minimum of $42,000 per month for its API,
including to research institutions and enterprises.
In response,
Microsoft has stated that its Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform and
Digital Marketing Center will no longer support Twitter from April 25, 2023.
This means that users will no longer have access to their Twitter accounts,
nor will they be able to manage tweets through Microsoft's free social media
management service.
Companies using Microsoft Advertising will
still be able to manage content for Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
through the platform.
The decision has been met with
dissatisfaction by Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, who has threatened to
take legal action, alleging that Microsoft illegally trained its AI models
on Twitter data. Musk co-founded OpenAI, which Microsoft invested billions
of dollars into and struck a licensing agreement with.
The move
comes at an unfortunate time for Musk, who has been working to win over
advertisers since reportedly losing more than half of Twitter's top 1,000
advertisers following his takeover of the platform in October.
