US to open antitrust probes of Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI

Intensifying scrutiny of Al industry comes amid questions of tech giants’ dominance

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 (AI) industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) 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 authorised to speak publicly about the confidential discussions.

Under the arrangement, the Justice Department will take the lead in investigating whether the behaviour 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 US$13 billion (S$17.5 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. After a similar deal in 2019, the government investigated Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta and has since sued each of them on claims that they violated anti-monopoly laws.

For months, Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI largely escaped the brunt of the Biden administration’s regulatory scrutiny. But that began to change as generative AI, which can produce human-like text, photos, videos and audio, burst onto the scene in late 2022 and created an industry frenzy.