Microsoft-OpenAI: Trial in America?

The collaboration between the two companies began in mid-2019. There are no official confirmations, but the investment Microsoft Inside OpenAI greater than 13 billion dollars. Both the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority have launched preliminary reviews of the partnership. The Justice Department and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) may also launch investigations.

Microsoft-OpenAI: Joining in Disguise?

Unlike Europe and the United Kingdom, the United States has two agencies that can initiate antitrust investigations: Department of Justice e FTC. According to Politico's sources, the two agencies must first decide who will look into the matter, otherwise there will be government intervention. However, it seems certain that a formal process will be launched to verify the collaboration between Microsoft and OpenAI.Acquisition or merger in disguise.

OpenAI uses Microsoft servers to train its generative AI models, integrating Microsoft GPT-4 and DALL-E 3. Co-pilot and other services. Despite the billion-dollar investment, the Redmond company has no control over OpenAI. However, US officials speculated that Microsoft had direct involvement in the rehiring of Sam Altman after his dismissal. Microsoft was given a seat on OpenAI's new board of directors, but without voting rights.

Both the Department of Justice and the FTC want to investigate whether a collaboration between OpenAI and Microsoft could Harmful competition. The two companies also started discussions on who should investigate various issues related to AI being developed, such as illegal scraping of online content for model training.