UK CompetitionRegulatory agenciesSaid that due toChatGPTDevelopersOpenAIThere has been a change in leadership atMicrosoftMicrosoft is investigating its collaboration with OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company established as a nonprofit entity whose board controls a commercial unit.maximumInvestors.
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Recent leadership changes have raised concerns among the Competition and Markets Authority, which announced it would review whether the collaboration resulted in an "acquisition of control." Last month, OpenAI's board fired and reappointed CEO Sam Altman and announced the formation of a new board. Microsoft now has a non-voting observer seat on OpenAI's board.
The inquiry comes as Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said after sacking Altman on November 17 that his company had not been consulted on the decision. He added: "There can be no partnership with OpenAI on its mission without deep engagement from Microsoft." Microsoft, a company with a market value of $2.8 trillion (£2.2 trillion), has invested $13 billion in OpenAI.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it wanted to examine whether the collaboration resulted in the acquisition of control of OpenAI, whether a de facto merger had taken place, and whether this had any impact on competition.FirstBefore the phase survey is launched” to collect comments in advance.
The watchdog, led by lawyer and ombudsman Sarah Cardell, said the collaboration involved multi-year, multi-billion dollar investments and close, multi-layered collaboration on technology development. This suggests the Competition and Markets Authority could be embarking on a second fight with tech companies after it blocked Microsoft's $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, the gaming company behind Call of Duty, only to relent after extracting concessions from Microsoft.
OpenAI's technology is the basis for applications such as the chatbot ChatGPT, and Microsoft uses OpenAI's models in its products, including the Bing search engine. As part of its investment, Microsoft provided OpenAI with the computing power needed to train and run the model.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it closely monitors the underlying model sector for potential competition or consumer protection issues. Similar investment strategies have been replicated elsewhere, such as Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, which received investments from Amazon and Google.
The regulator said in a September report that it would closely monitor the impact of big tech companies’ investments in AI developers, adding that it was “crucial” not to allow the AI market to fall into the hands of a few companies.
The Competition and Markets Authority will review the comments received from stakeholders and may launch an investigation into the collaboration if necessary.Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement on Friday that the OpenAI collaboration began in 2019 and has promoted "more innovation and competition in artificial intelligence" while maintaining the independence of both companies.
He added:onlyWhat has changed is that Microsoft will now have a non-voting observer on the OpenAI board, which is very different from the situation with Google’s acquisition of DeepMind in the UK.”
A spokesperson for OpenAI said the collaboration enables the company to develop "safe and beneficial AI tools for everyone" while maintaining its independence, and that Microsoft's board observer status "does not provide management access or control over OpenAI's operations."