Twitter CEO Elon Musk threatened to sue Microsoft on Wednesday, accusing the software program big of illegally utilizing the social media firm’s information to coach its synthetic intelligence mannequin.

Musk’s menace by tweet got here after Mashable and different publications reported that Microsoft would drop Twitter from its promoting platform, which allows advert patrons to handle all of their social media accounts in a single place.

“They educated illegally utilizing Twitter information,” Musk tweeted. “Lawsuit time.”

Musk, who can be CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, typically tweets about plans that by no means come to fruition, and no lawsuit seems to have been filed. Twitter’s press line did not reply meaningfully to a request for remark, and a Microsoft consultant declined to remark.

Musk’s menace is the most recent indication that information possession is shortly changing into a fraught battleground within the generative AI rush. Huge Tech firms are working to develop cutting-edge AI fashions like OpenAI’s GPT, and information homeowners are looking for to cease them or cost to be used of their content material.

Microsoft develops its personal so-called massive language fashions (LLMs) and sells entry to OpenAI’s fashions. Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI final 12 months in an unusually structured deal. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI earlier than leaving its board in 2018, and has complained not too long ago of the corporate’s transfer from a nonprofit mannequin to a extremely useful enterprise influenced by Microsoft.

LLMs like GPT require terabytes of knowledge for coaching, a lot of which is scraped from web sites like Reddit, StackOverflow, and Twitter. Coaching information from social networks is efficacious as a result of it captures casual, back-and-forth conversations.

As these new AI fashions transfer from analysis labs and universities into the company world, the homeowners of the information are beginning to make calls for.

For instance, Reddit stated earlier this week that it might cost firms for entry to its programming interface used to feed the conversations amongst Redditors into AI coaching software program. Common Music Group additionally stated this week that such coaching of artists’ music would symbolize “each a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright legislation” in response to a viral video of a tune that claimed to make use of AI to mimic the rapper Drake.

And inventory photograph database Getty Photos is suing Steady Diffusion, alleging that the corporate copied its content material to coach its AI picture generator.

Musk stated in December that Twitter would “pause” OpenAI’s entry to its database. He is additionally introduced plans to construct his personal massive language mannequin in considered one of his firms referred to as TruthGPT.

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