Twitter owner Elon Musk blamed a number of factors for use restrictions on the social media network but singled out the use of artificial intelligence for strains on his company’s computer systems Saturday. The result left millions of users with restricted ability to read and view other users’ tweets and raised concerns about the future of the company.
Musk’s announcement Saturday morning initially restricted the number of posts that accounts could view. Verified accounts which pay an $8 monthly fee, were initially limited to 6,000 posts per day. Later on Saturday, Musk raised the limit to 8,000 and then 10,000 for those accounts.
Existing unverified accounts could initially view 600 per day, which was raised to 800 and then 1,000.
New unverified accounts received the lowest ability to view other posts, initially at 300 posts, then 400 before rising to 500 per day.
Just twelve hours after Musk’s initial post, it received more than 175,000 comments.
Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified https://t.co/fuRcJLifTn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023
The Tesla founder called the actions a “temporary emergency feature.”
“We were getting data pillaged so much that it was degrading service for normal users!” he said.
According to Musk, a number of accounts ‘scrape’ Twitter data “extremely aggressively.” This often includes companies attempting to collect large amounts of social media information.
“Almost every company doing AI, from startups to some of the biggest corporations on Earth, was scraping vast amounts of data. It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation,” Musk said.
Musk specifically blamed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Musk had played a considerable role in the formation of the company, which since developed the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Musk previously said that OpenAI’s investor Microsoft was using data from Twitter immediately.
He also said that social media platforms that do not require verification would become “bot-strewn hellscapes as soon as they become relevant.”
Earlier this year, Musk threatened to sue Microsoft over the use of data, which he called “ripping off the Twitter database.”
