Sept. 11 (UPI) — Eight U.S. senators on Tuesday urged the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to undertake an antitrust investigation of the providers of generative AI content.
The senators say the generative AI content providers use information obtained from publishers without their permission, which directs online traffic away from those publishers and decreases their revenues.
“Multiple dominant online platforms have introduced new generative AI features that answer user queries by summarizing or … merely regurgitating online content from other sources or platforms,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in a news release Tuesday.
“The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work,” Klobuchar said.
Instead of producing results that link to publishers’ websites, she said the generative AI features on platforms like Google keep users on the search platform, which ensures only the search platform profits from revenues generated by ads and data collection.
Klobuchar chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer rights.
She was joined by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Tina Smith, D-Minn., in calling for the federal agencies to investigate possible antitrust violations by the providers of generative AI content.
“Some generative AI features introduced by the already-dominant platforms are a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws,” the lawmakers said in the news release.
The search results often provide AI-generated summaries above traditional search results that enable people to visit relevant websites to obtain the information they seek.
The placement of the AI summaries at the top of search results pushes legitimate publishers and providers of relevant information farther down on results pages, which makes it less likely people will go to their respective websites, the senators argue.
They say the providers of generative AI programs engage in unlawful exclusionary conduct that harms competition by scraping information from news sites and other providers of original content without directing users to the actual sources.
The New York Times recently published an article showing the popular ChatGPT generative AI program provided results that were “near-verbatim excerpts” from publishers that require paid subscriptions to view the content.
Officials for ChatGPT developer OpenAI said it’s impossible for generative AI to work without using copyrighted information from other sources.
U.S. lawmakers aren’t the only ones looking into potential antitrust violations by the providers of generative AI programs and content.
Britain’s antitrust division in December opened an investigation to determine if a $10 billion investment by Microsoft in OpenAI creates a business merger that substantially lessens competition.