Taming the Twitterverse: Addressing AI’s Influence on Twitter

Twitter has taken steps to limit the use of data available on its platform to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. Elon Musk announced on July 1, 2023, that Twitter would temporarily restrict how many tweets users could read per day to discourage “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation.

Verified accounts are temporarily limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, while unverified accounts and new unverified accounts are limited to reading 600 and 300 posts per day, respectively. This move comes after Twitter had announced that it would require users to have an account on the social media platform to view tweets, a move that Musk had called a “temporary emergency measure”.

Twitter’s decision to limit the reading of tweets is aimed at curbing the use of data available on its platform to train AI models. Musk had earlier expressed displeasure with AI firms like OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for using Twitter’s data to train their large language models
. The owners of data are starting to make demands as new AI models move from research labs and universities into the corporate world. For example, Reddit said earlier this week that it would charge companies for access to its programming interface used to feed the conversations among Redditors into AI training software.
In addition to limiting the reading of tweets, Twitter has also blocked non-users from viewing tweets unless they are logged into an account in an effort to curb the effects of AI data scraping.