US initiates probe into Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI: Here’s all we know

The investigations and what they are about

The Justice Department will now lead an investigation into whether Nvidia’s behaviour violated antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission will examine the behaviour of OpenAI and Microsoft.

Both these agencies have notably been at the forefront of Joe Biden’s administration’s efforts to limit the biggest tech companies’ power. In fact, in 2019, Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta were investigated by the government following a similar deal. Each of the companies were subsequently sued for allegedly violating antimonopoly laws.

Several regulators have expressed their desire to get ahead of developments in AI. An investigation was launched into OpenAI back in July by the FTC, which tried to examine whether it negatively affected consumers through its collection of data.

FTC also began an inquiry into strategic partnerships between tech giants and AI start-ups in January, including Google’s and Amazon’s investments in Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI.

An insider, who is an unnamed FTC official, stated that in the last week, the discussions between FTC and the Justice Department over the AI companies reached its last stages. The discussion involved both the agencies’ senior levels.

In an interview in February, Lina Khan, the chair of FTC, said that when it came to Artificial Intelligence, 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.”