New York Times: The United States may conduct antitrust investigations on NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI

According to The New York Times, sources revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have reached an agreement to allow them to continue their antitrust investigation into the dominant roles played by Microsoft (MSFT.O), OpenAI, and NVIDIA (NVDA.O) in the artificial intelligence industry.

The full text is as follows:

Federal regulators have reached an agreement to allow them to continue their antitrust investigation into the dominance of Microsoft, OpenAI, and NVIDIA in the field of artificial intelligence, marking the peak of regulatory scrutiny over this powerful technology.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement last week, expected to be finalized in the coming days. According to two informed sources, the contents of the agreement are confidential, and they are not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Under the agreement, the Department of Justice will lead the investigation into whether NVIDIA (the world's largest AI chip manufacturer) has violated antitrust laws. Sources indicate that the Federal Trade Commission will primarily review the actions of OpenAI (the company developing ChatGPT chatbots) and Microsoft (which has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and has agreements with other AI companies).

This agreement signifies that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are intensifying their scrutiny of artificial intelligence. AI is a rapidly evolving technology that has the potential to disrupt people's work, information access, and lifestyles. These two agencies have been at the forefront of the Biden administration's efforts to control the power of tech giants. After reaching a similar agreement in 2019, the government launched investigations into Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta, suing each of them for violating antitrust laws.

For several months, NVIDIA, Microsoft, and OpenAI have largely avoided the heavy-handed regulatory scrutiny of the Biden administration. However, with the sudden emergence and industry frenzy caused by generative AI capable of producing human-like text, images, videos, and audio at the end of 2022, this situation is beginning to change.

Regulators recently stated that they aim to stay ahead of AI development. In July last year, the Federal Trade Commission (F.T.C.) initiated an investigation to determine if OpenAI's data collection practices harm consumers. In January this year, the F.T.C. also launched a broad investigation into strategic partnerships between tech giants and AI startups, including Microsoft's investment in OpenAI, as well as Google and Amazon's investment in another young AI company, Anthropic.

However, the U.S. still lags behind Europe in AI regulation. Last year, EU officials reached a landmark agreement on a series of rules to regulate this rapidly evolving technology, focusing on its highest-risk uses. In Washington last month, a group of senators proposed legislation on AI, calling for an annual investment of $32 billion to advance the U.S.'s leadership in this technology field, but without requiring specific new regulations A person familiar with the discussions said that discussions between the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice regarding artificial intelligence companies entered the final stage last week, involving senior officials from both agencies, with the source being an official from the Federal Trade Commission.

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan stated in an interview in February that the agency is trying to identify "potential issues" with artificial intelligence when the problems "have just emerged rather than years later when they have become deeply rooted and harder to correct."