Microsoft balks at paying $42,000 for Twitter API

On April 25, Microsoft will remove Twitter from the AI tool Digital Marketing Center, designed to manage advertising campaigns on social media.

Removing support for the website means marketers will no longer be able to use it to create, manage and schedule tweets. The post-activity statistics will also stop working.

Microsoft noted that other channels on the platform, such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, are still available.

Digital Marketing Center enables small and medium-sized business owners to manage advertising campaigns on social media. The tool uses artificial intelligence to optimize and automate digital marketing.

The tech giant announced changes less than a month after Twitter announced the introduction of fees for using the API of the network. According to Wired, the cheapest package costs $42,000 per month.

Microsoft’s move drew a response from the social network’s head, Elon Musk. He threatened to file a lawsuit against the company over allegedly illegal use of tweets to train AI.

They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2023

“They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time,” wrote Musk.

He did not specify how Microsoft trained anything illegally using Twitter data. Nevertheless, the tech giant is a key partner of OpenAI, which developed the popular ChatGPT chatbot.

The seriousness of the leadership’s intentions at the social network remains unclear. Still, Microsoft’s decision comes amid tough times for Twitter.

Since Musk took over the company, the site has steadily been losing advertisers. According to Pathmatics by Sensor Tower, in January 2023 fewer than half of the 1,000 key partners spent money on paid promotion.

In April, Musk said he intended to create the ‘most truthful’ chatbot TruthGPT.

In March Twitter published part of the original recommendation algorithm.

In October 2022, Musk closed the deal to buy the social network for $44 billion.