The explosion of generative artificial intelligence is raising concerns within the Competition Authority. The latter decided to take action on Thursday to examine the colossal competitive challenges of the discipline and its players.
For the year 2023 alone, generative AI is expected to generate a turnover of 42 billion euros, double that in 2022. Even more impressive, this could be around 200 billion euros at the horizon 2030. It therefore seems normal that the Competition Authority would like to analyze the strategies of digital players in the field, including Microsoft, Amazon and Google, who have made various acquisitions in recent months. A public consultation was officially launched this Thursday, February 8. It will allow everyone to express themselves.
Go further than the French and European initiatives on generative AI
The ambition of the Competition Authority is simple. She wants to assess the competitiveness of the generative AI sector, by studying the investments of giants in innovative companies or by scrutinizing the practices of large technology companies on cloud infrastructure (the concentration of the sector around a few players questions her) , data, skilled labor and others.
It will be recalled that since ChatGPT was made available to the public in November 2022, the technology has spread absolutely everywhere or almost, then in different forms, with the generation of textual, audio, photo and video content.
The Authority’s self-referral is part of a dynamic national and European context. France, on September 19, 2023, for example, set up a Generative AI Committee, to define the contours of an ambitious policy for the development of artificial intelligence, even if it is already, perhaps, a bit late.
The Competition Authority wants to ensure that the giants do not abuse their dominant position
At the European level too, things are moving. February 2, 2024 saw the world’s first comprehensive AI law adopted by representatives of the 27 EU member countries, and the G7 agreed on a code of conduct on intelligence artificial a little earlier, on November 27, 2023.
Digital giants, already dominant in certain sectors, could exploit vertical integration to consolidate their market power in generative AI. The influence of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google is expanding with significant stakes in competing start-ups. Let us cite OpenAI for Microsoft and Anthropic for Google and Amazon. The various competition authorities are also closely monitoring these developments and examining the possible damaging effects.
The public consultation, which gives stakeholders until March 22 to respond, aims to enrich the thinking of the Authority, which will deliver its opinion in the coming months. Sector players are called upon to contribute to the work, to lay the foundations for balanced regulation of generative AI, reconciling innovation and preservation of competition. Will the tech giants respond to this call? That’s the whole question.
Source : Competition Authority
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