The US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have reached an agreement that allows them to continue antitrust investigations into the dominant role that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, the Novel York Times reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter .
Under the deal, the U.S. Department of Justice will take the lead in investigating whether Nvidia violated antitrust laws, while the FTC will investigate the conduct of OpenAI and Microsoft, according to the report. Although OpenAI’s parent is a nonprofit, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in the for-profit subsidiary, which would represent a 49% stake.
The Microsoft-OpenAI partnership is also under informal scrutiny in other regions.
Regulators reached the agreement over the past week and it is expected to be finalized in the coming days, the report said, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The FTC is said to be reviewing Microsoft’s $650 million deal with artificial intelligence startup Inflection AI, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
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These moves signal growing regulatory scrutiny of the AI industry. In January, the FTC ordered OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet Amazon and Anthropic to provide information on recent investments and partnerships involving generative artificial intelligence companies and cloud service providers.
Last July, the FTC launched an investigation into OpenAI over claims that it violated consumer protection laws, putting personal reputation and data at risk.
Last week, the head of the US antitrust office, Jonathan Kanter, at a conference on artificial intelligence, referred to “structures and trends in artificial intelligence that should give us food for thought”, adding that this technology relies on huge amounts of data and computing power, which may give already dominant companies a significant advantage.
Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, the Department of Justice and the FTC did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.
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