UK regulator eyes tech giants’ deals with AI companies
The UK's competition regulator has launched another salvo at Big Tech's relationships with artificial intelligence companies, amid concern their dominance of the powerful technology could harm consumers.
The Competition & Markets Authority is canvassing views on whether partnerships between Microsoft and Mistral, and between Amazon and Anthropic, as well as Microsoft's hiring of key figures from Inflection AI, could count as mergers or harm competition.
The move is being seen in some quarters as a potential blow to the government's tech ambitions.
Downing Street has tried to position the UK as a hub for AI and AI safety and has touted a less stringent, more “proinnovation” approach than the European Union. Jeremy Hunt, the UK chancellor, publicly welcomed Microsoft's hiring of Mustafa Suleyman, the British founder of Inflection AI, whose recruitment, alongside that of other staff members, is now being scrutinised.
“Mustafa and Microsoft look like a great fit,” the chancellor wrote on Twitter/X last month.
“No one knows the incredible AI ecosystem we have here in the UK better than Mustafa. Quite a thing to see the top roles in AI both at Deep Mind/Google and Microsoft go to extraordinary British talent - helping us realise our ambition to be the world's next Silicon Valley.”
Some British AI start-ups have privately expressed concern that the CMA's intervention could have a chilling effect on investment in their own businesses from the only companies with the technical and financial firepower to help them develop.
The CMA announcement signals just how worried the watchdog is about the grip of the big US technology companies on foundation models, which are critical for generative AI.
These powerful digital engines include the large language models (LLMs) that power services such as ChatGPT and Google Bard.
The US tech giants already control the raw data and computing power, as well as potential routes to market, given their ownership of app stores and software platforms.
The CMA has already begun an investigation into whether Microsoft's multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI could be considered a merger by stealth.
In a recent paper, the watchdog said it was determined to learn from the past decade, a period when power over the digital world was concentrated in the hands of a small number of businesses at a “pivotal juncture“.
The CMA is thought to have singled out these three “arrangements” between Big Tech and AI companies because they happened within the past four months, the CMA's window to act.
The call for third parties to submit evidence before the May 9 cutoff is a potential precursor to a phase one investigation into the business relationships.
Microsoft said: “We remain confident that common business practices such as the hiring of talent or making a fractional investment in an AI start-up promote competition and are not the same as a merger.”
Amazon said: “Unlike partnerships between other AI start-ups and large technology companies, our collaboration with Anthropic includes a limited investment, doesn't give Amazon a board director or observer role, and continues to have Anthropic running its models on multiple cloud providers.”