There are regulators in the US and Europe “common principles” they plan to follow to “protect competition and consumers” when it comes to artificial intelligence. “We will strive to ensure effective competition and fair and honest treatment of consumers and businesses, guided by our respective laws.” , , and Great Britain he said.
“Technological inflection points can provide new tools to accelerate competition, opportunity, innovation and growth,” the agencies said. . Accordingly, we must strive to ensure that the public fully benefits from these moments.
Regulators have identified fair dealing (ie, making sure key players in the sector avoid exclusionary tactics), interoperability and choice as three principles to protect competition in the AI space. They based these factors on their experience in related markets.
The agencies also disclosed some potential risks to competition, such as deals between major players in the market. They said that agreements between companies in the sector (which ) may not affect competition in some cases, while in others “these partnerships and investments may be used by large firms to subvert or cooperate with competitive threats and manipulate market outcomes to their advantage at the expense of the public.”
Other competition-related risks cited in the statement include the consolidation or expansion of market power in AI-related markets, as well as “concentrated control of key inputs.” The agencies define the latter as a small number of companies that have a potentially large impact on the field of artificial intelligence by virtue of their control and supply of “specialized chips, significant computing, scalable data and specialist technical expertise.”
In addition, the CMA, DOJ and FTC said they will be looking into the dangers AI may pose to consumers. The statement notes that it is important for consumers to be aware of how artificial intelligence impacts the products and services they buy or use. “Firms that use consumer data in a deceptive or unfair way to train their models can undermine people’s privacy, security and autonomy,” the statement said. “Firms that use data from business customers to train their models may also be exposing competitively sensitive information.”
These are all fairly generalized statements about the agencies’ general approach to promoting competition in the AI space, but given that they all operate under different laws, it would be difficult to get into the specifics of how the statement would regulate them. At the very least, the statement should serve as a reminder to companies operating in the generative AI space that regulators are keeping a close eye on things, even as the sector advances rapidly.
