Microsoft, Google AI deals face EU antitrust scrutiny, Vestager says – POLITICO

Vestager warned that AI is “moving at breakneck speed.” She said they have “a number of other preliminary antitrust investigations underway into various practices in AI-related markets,” without providing details.

“We can’t just sit back and see how things play out,” she said. “Now is the time to act. In times of major industrial and technological change, strong enforcement of competition rules is always needed.”

“It is already clear that we must remain vigilant. Market concentration, anti-competitive behavior and new types of partnerships,” she said.

The Commission is concerned about how Big Tech companies could use their power to create artificial intelligence tools and deploy them in their ecosystems. Large core AI service models “require massive amounts of data, compute power, cloud infrastructure and talent that only a few players have,” Vestager said.

She also said officials are looking at acquisitions, where one company takes over another, to bring in talent, citing Microsoft and artificial intelligence developer Inflection.

“We will ensure that such practices are not violated by our merger control laws,” she said.

“The commercialization of AI and its powerful tools will be led by a few companies that already have a lot of market power,” she said. “That’s why we remain vigilant.”