The European Commission Launches Aggressive Enforcement Actions to Protect AI Competition and Democracy
Europe director Max von Thun spotlights the EU’s new antitrust investigations into Google and Meta mark a crucial step toward preventing Big Tech from using its platform power to dominate AI, exploit creators, and undermine competition and democratic access to information.
BRUSSELS - Today, the Commission opened a highly significant investigation into two potential breaches by Google of EU competition law. This includes whether Google’s use of publisher content to provide generative AI-powered services (‘AI Overviews' and ‘AI Mode’) has harmed publishers by failing to provide appropriate compensation or offer them the ability to refuse such use of their content. The Commission will also consider Google’s use of content uploaded to YouTube, based on the concern that creators have not been given appropriate compensation nor the right to refuse, and the concern that rival AI developers cannot used YouTube to train their models.
Today’s announcement comes just one week after the Commission announced its first major AI-related antitrust investigation assessing whether Meta’s is breaching EU competition law by prohibiting third party AI providers from offering their services through WhatsApp’s ‘Business Solution’ service, while at the same time bundling its proprietary AI services into the platform.
Max von Thun, Open Markets Director of Europe & Transatlantic Partnerships, issued the following statement:
“It has been clear for some time that tech monopolists are using and abusing their control over platform infrastructure to give themselves unfair competitive advantages in the race to develop AI products and services. This comes at a cost to consumers, creators, and potential competitors, who are deprived of choice, fair compensation, and the chance to provide innovative alternatives to Big Tech’s AI. This further concentration of control in the hands of a few gatekeepers also threatens our democracies by weakening the financial viability of independent publishers and undermining access to objective and diverse sources of information.”
The Open Markets Institute has consistently advocated for early intervention to prevent AI from becoming dominated by a few tech giants, so we welcome the initiative the Commission has taken with these investigations. Given the potential significance of AI to Europe’s economies and democracies, it is essential that this emerging technology does not fall into the hands of a small number of unaccountable U.S. monopolists.