FTC and DOJ want antitrust investigation into Microsoft and OpenAI collaboration

Both the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission want to conduct an antitrust investigation into the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI. The organizations want to determine whether the collaboration between the two companies creates unfair competition.

According to the editors of Politico both government institutions would also like to investigate whether OpenAI has illegally collected content from the internet to train its AI models. According to Politico, it is not yet clear which organization would lead the investigations, because both the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission would not want to relinquish their powers regarding these files to each other.

Microsoft has not yet responded to the plans of the American government organizations. The company did refer to an earlier statement on X stating that it will take an observer role on OpenAI’s board of directors. That statement was published after it became known that the British regulator CMA also had plans to investigate Microsoft’s billion-dollar investment in OpenAI. Microsoft invested a billion dollars in 2019. At the beginning of 2023, Microsoft once again opened its purse strings to reportedly invest another $10 billion in the research center.