The European Commission is considering whether a formal investigation is necessary into the investments of tech group Microsoft in OpenAI, the American company behind chatbot ChatGPT.
To this end, Brussels is first investigating whether European competition rules cover investments worth 13 billion dollars.
The European Commission follows a similar step by market watchdog CMA in the United Kingdom, which examines whether Microsoft is not becoming too powerful with its investments. The American FTC would also critically monitor the tech group’s investments.
According to the Bloomberg news agency, the supervisory authority would conduct an exploratory investigation that does not yet have formal status.
The European Commission also called on Tuesday to experts and companies with knowledge of artificial intelligence (AI) and the virtual world. They are called on to tell the committee more “about any competition problems they observe in these sectors,” said European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.
