The British watchdog said it was seeking comment from interested third parties before deciding whether to conduct an in-depth antitrust investigation. (Photo: Reuters)
British competition regulators said on Wednesday they will scrutinize recent artificial intelligence deals from Microsoft and Amazon over concerns that the measures could thwart competition in the AI industry.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it is investigating Microsoft’s partnership with France’s Mistral AI and the recruitment of key staff from another startup, Inflection AI. The watchdog also separately announced it is investigating Amazon’s $4 billion investment in San Francisco-based Anthropic.
Big Tech companies have poured money into generative AI startups amid growing public and business interest in the technology, but the investments have also drawn the attention of antitrust authorities.
The British watchdog said it was seeking comment from interested third parties before deciding whether to conduct an in-depth antitrust investigation.
“We will objectively and impartially assess whether each of these three deals falls within UK merger rules and, if so, whether they have any impact on competition in the UK,” said Joel Bamford, the watchdog’s executive director. a statement.
Microsoft said it will provide the watchdog with the information it needs to conduct its investigation.
We remain convinced that common business practices such as hiring talent or making a fractional investment in an AI start-up promote competition and are not the same as a merger,” the company said.
Microsoft last month hired Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google’s DeepMind AI research lab, to lead its consumer artificial intelligence unit, along with the chief scientist and several top engineers and researchers from Inflection, its AI startup.
Microsoft also teamed up earlier this year with Mistral, which has become France’s AI darling after being founded only last year. That followed Microsoft’s previous existing partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is also under scrutiny by the CMA.
Amazon, meanwhile, has spent billions for a minority stake in Anthropic. The two companies are working together to develop so-called foundational models, which support the generative AI systems that have attracted global attention.
It is unprecedented for the CMA to review such a partnership, Amazon said in a statement. Unlike partnerships between other AI startups and large tech companies, our partnership with Anthropic involves a limited investment, does not provide Amazon with a board member or observer role, and Anthropic still runs its models on multiple cloud providers.
The CMA said it is stepping up its investigation into the foundation modeling market after publishing a report highlighting the risk that powerful companies could use partnerships with key AI players to strengthen their positions.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: April 24, 2024 | 7:48 PM IST