Irish Council for Civil Liberties says Microsoft–OpenAI partnership must be investigated as merger

The Irish Council for Civil Liberties desires Microsoft investigated by European Union regulators over its partnership with OpenAI.

In response to a call for commentary from the European Commission, the Irish civil liberties group posted its submission on Feb. 2. The letter begins by welcoming the investigation and continues to put out a point-by-point case towards treating the Microsoft–OpenAI relationship as something apart from a merger.

Earlier this week, @ICCLtweet together with a various group of organisations made a submission to European Fee on Microsoft-OpenAI “partnership” merger inquiry. The submission builds on our submission to the UK competitors authority.https://t.co/2qoKKBVGIG

— Kris Shrishak (@KrisShrishak) February 2, 2024

Indicators of a merger

The council’s submission was endorsed by a number of associate organizations, together with Foxglove, Mozilla and the European Digital SME Alliance.

Textual content all through the doc signifies that the council views Microsoft’s involvement with OpenAI as going past the norm for such preparations.

The commentary cites Microsoft’s $13-billion investments in OpenAI in addition to the latter’s latest firing and then rehiring of its CEO and co-founder Sam Altman in its teardown of the present association.

The council goes on to level out that Microsoft stepped in and requested OpenAI to reverse its determination to fireside Altman earlier than in the end providing employment to Altman and every other OpenAI staff who needed to leap ship with the previous CEO.

Synthetic intelligence affect

“Taken collectively,” writes the council, “the management battle of November 2023 at OpenAI and different developments strongly recommend that Microsoft had or has acquired ‘decisive affect’ over OpenAI.”

Past merely influencing firm choices, the council additionally submits that Microsoft is exercising monopolistic energy over the AI trade. The Redmond firm’s Azure cloud providers function infrastructure for some OpenAI providers; the council is asking the EU fee to analyze whether or not Microsoft has final technological management over ChatGPT and different providers.

Per the submission, such management could be detrimental to {the marketplace} and customers:

“Letting the most important incumbents dictate how AI develops, by leveraging their present monopoly energy into future markets and applied sciences and making certain management over corporations which may have threatened their dominance, will serve their revenue margins however won’t serve the general public curiosity.”

The Microsoft–OpenAI partnership can be being investigated in the United Kingdom the place regulators will decide whether or not it must be thought-about a merger by regulation.

Associated: Microsoft CEO calls OpenAI partnership ‘pro-competition’ amid UK, EU merger probes