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FTC Chair Lina Khan Vows to Protect Competition in AI Market

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WASHINGTON—FTC Chair Lina Khan on Monday said her agency would protect competition in the nascent market for artificial-intelligence tools, warning that big-tech companies could “start to panic” and try to block new entrants through unlawful tactics.

Speaking at an antitrust conference, Ms. Khan said the Federal Trade Commission would be watching to ensure startups can compete in the AI industry.

“As you have machine learning that depends on huge amounts of data and also depends on huge amounts of storage, we need to be very vigilant to make sure that this is not just another site for the big companies becoming bigger and really squelching rivals,” Ms. Khan said.

During moments of technological transition, “that’s when you see the incumbents start to panic,” Ms. Khan added. “You see the incumbents sometimes having to resort to anticompetitive tactics to protect their moats and protect their dominance.”

Ms. Khan made the remarks at the 2023 Annual Antitrust Enforcers Summit, a daylong forum co-hosted by the FTC and the Justice Department. The two agencies share authority to enforce U.S. antitrust laws.

Jonathan Kanter,

the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, spoke at the conference and echoed Ms. Khan’s concerns about ensuring competition in the AI market.

“When we think about AI, it is inherently dependent on scale,” Mr. Kanter said. “And so markets that are inherently dependent on scale often present a greater risk of having deep moats and barriers to entry. It’s really important that we understand that.”

OpenAI, a San Francisco-based research firm, kicked off the recent AI boom last year when it released to the public an image-generation tool called Dall-E 2, which can create original images based on simple prompts. OpenAI then released ChatGPT, an AI tool that can generate everything from business plans to limericks.

Microsoft,

which has made a multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI, has integrated the company’s AI into its Bing search engine and is infusing it into workplace software products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Photo illustration: Preston Jessee for The Wall Street Journal

Alphabet Inc.’s

Google has introduced some AI-powered writing features in Docs and Gmail services to help people start writing. 

Ms. Khan rose to prominence as a vocal critic of powerful technology companies and has questioned mergers that likely would have gone unchallenged in years past.

Last year, the FTC sued to block Facebook parent company

Meta Platforms Inc.

META 1.21%

from acquiring the virtual-reality startup Within Unlimited Inc. The FTC said the deal, if completed, would likely stifle competition in a nascent market.

After a federal judge in January denied the FTC’s request for an injunction halting the deal, the agency withdrew its challenge to the deal last month.

Ms. Khan addressed that case during her remarks on Monday, saying that while the judge denied the FTC’s requested relief, he sided with the agency on important legal disputes. The judge’s ruling advanced the law in the FTC’s favor and laid out a road map for future challenges, Ms. Khan said.

“That’s a good example of a case that didn’t go the way we wanted but really did lay out a map, and showed the way for continuing to bring potential competition cases, especially in digital markets and especially in nascent markets,” Ms. Khan said.

Write to Jan Wolfe at [email protected] and Dave Michaels at [email protected]

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8


WASHINGTON—FTC Chair Lina Khan on Monday said her agency would protect competition in the nascent market for artificial-intelligence tools, warning that big-tech companies could “start to panic” and try to block new entrants through unlawful tactics.

Speaking at an antitrust conference, Ms. Khan said the Federal Trade Commission would be watching to ensure startups can compete in the AI industry.

“As you have machine learning that depends on huge amounts of data and also depends on huge amounts of storage, we need to be very vigilant to make sure that this is not just another site for the big companies becoming bigger and really squelching rivals,” Ms. Khan said.

During moments of technological transition, “that’s when you see the incumbents start to panic,” Ms. Khan added. “You see the incumbents sometimes having to resort to anticompetitive tactics to protect their moats and protect their dominance.”

Ms. Khan made the remarks at the 2023 Annual Antitrust Enforcers Summit, a daylong forum co-hosted by the FTC and the Justice Department. The two agencies share authority to enforce U.S. antitrust laws.

Jonathan Kanter,

the Justice Department’s antitrust chief, spoke at the conference and echoed Ms. Khan’s concerns about ensuring competition in the AI market.

“When we think about AI, it is inherently dependent on scale,” Mr. Kanter said. “And so markets that are inherently dependent on scale often present a greater risk of having deep moats and barriers to entry. It’s really important that we understand that.”

OpenAI, a San Francisco-based research firm, kicked off the recent AI boom last year when it released to the public an image-generation tool called Dall-E 2, which can create original images based on simple prompts. OpenAI then released ChatGPT, an AI tool that can generate everything from business plans to limericks.

Microsoft,

which has made a multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI, has integrated the company’s AI into its Bing search engine and is infusing it into workplace software products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Photo illustration: Preston Jessee for The Wall Street Journal

Alphabet Inc.’s

Google has introduced some AI-powered writing features in Docs and Gmail services to help people start writing. 

Ms. Khan rose to prominence as a vocal critic of powerful technology companies and has questioned mergers that likely would have gone unchallenged in years past.

Last year, the FTC sued to block Facebook parent company

Meta Platforms Inc.

META 1.21%

from acquiring the virtual-reality startup Within Unlimited Inc. The FTC said the deal, if completed, would likely stifle competition in a nascent market.

After a federal judge in January denied the FTC’s request for an injunction halting the deal, the agency withdrew its challenge to the deal last month.

Ms. Khan addressed that case during her remarks on Monday, saying that while the judge denied the FTC’s requested relief, he sided with the agency on important legal disputes. The judge’s ruling advanced the law in the FTC’s favor and laid out a road map for future challenges, Ms. Khan said.

“That’s a good example of a case that didn’t go the way we wanted but really did lay out a map, and showed the way for continuing to bring potential competition cases, especially in digital markets and especially in nascent markets,” Ms. Khan said.

Write to Jan Wolfe at [email protected] and Dave Michaels at [email protected]

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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