Antitrust Chief in Germany Cautions AI Could Increase Big Tech’s Control

Germany’s competition authority chief has cautioned that the rise of artificial intelligence could enhance the dominance of Big Tech companies in the market, urging regulators to remain vigilant against any potential anti-competitive actions.

Andreas Mundt’s comments highlight regulatory concerns that tech giants can use vast amounts of user data to gain a competitive edge in new technology used in smart homes, online search, online advertising, cars and many other products and services.

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Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft have recently become rivals in artificial intelligence, with the latter investing heavily in OpenAI and the former building, among other things, the Bard AI chatbot.

The rise in popularity of artificial intelligence has governments around the world scrambling to set rules for the use of the technology as the European Union races to pass its landmark AI rules by the end of the year.

“It is crucial for us as the competition authority that this new technology does not further strengthen the dominance of large companies,” Mundt told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

“The danger is very high because you need two things above all for artificial intelligence, powerful servers and huge amounts of data. The big internet companies have both,” he said.

Mundt said the industry is still open to competition, but regulators need to make sure it stays that way.

“However, even models from smaller vendors can become so popular that they evolve into a kind of operating system, a new platform,” he said.

“Both development possibilities are possible, and as an authority we must be careful not to bury competitive potential from the start.”

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