Open Markets & Partner Civil Society Organisations Urge EU Regulators to Address Concentration in AI
BRUSSELS — The Open Markets institute, AI Now Institute, Foxglove, ARTICLE 19, Mozilla Foundation, SOMO, Irish Council for Civil Liberties / Enforce and Rebalance Now made a joint submission in response to the European Commission’s call for contributions on competition in generative AI.
“Any sensible regulatory action in generative AI must begin with a hard truth: power in the sector is already highly concentrated. Decades of underenforcement of competition rules in digital markets have consolidated resources and capabilities in the hands of a few dominant firms, with high costs for our economies and societies,” the groups wrote.
The submission details early moves by the largest tech companies to position themselves to control the AI market up and down the tech stack.
It also proposes a number of solutions that the Commission can use to address these high levels of concentration and control, including by:
Making reforms to the EU’s merger control regime to facilitate investigations of AI partnerships and minority investments that potentially fall outside of the scope of the EUMR, but which can have a significant impact on competition in the market.
Introducing a legal presumption against acquisitions by dominant firms — for example, gatekeepers designated under the DMA. Acquisitions by this subset of firms would be presumed to be illegal under the EU’s merger control regime, unless they were able to conclusively demonstrate that they would not create an SIEC.
Read the full submission here.