WASHINGTON — Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated.
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential discussions.
Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behavior of Nvidia, the biggest maker of AI chips, has violated antitrust laws, the people said. The FTC will play the lead role in examining the conduct of OpenAI, which makes the ChatGPT chatbot, and Microsoft, which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and made deals with other AI companies, the people said.
The agreement signals intensifying scrutiny by the Justice Department and the FTC into AI, a rapidly advancing technology that has the potential to upend jobs, information and people’s lives. Both agencies have been at the forefront of the Biden administration’s efforts to rein in the power of the biggest tech companies.
Regulators have recently signaled that they want to get ahead of developments in AI. In July, the FTC opened an investigation into whether OpenAI had harmed consumers through its collection of data. In January, the FTC also started a broad inquiry into strategic partnerships between tech giants and AI startups, including Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI and Google’s and Amazon’s investments in Anthropic, another young AI company.
Lina Khan, the chair of the FTC, said in a February interview that when it came to AI, the agency was trying to spot “potential problems at the inception rather than years and years and years later, when problems are deeply baked in and much more difficult to rectify.”
Spokespeople for the FTC and the Justice Department declined to comment. Microsoft and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Nvidia declined to comment.
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