WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 4: Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan speaks throughout a dialogue on antitrust reforms at the Brookings Institution October 4, 2023 in Washington, DC. Khan assumed the function of FTC chair in June 2021 after being appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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The Federal Trade Commission stated Thursday it should conduct an in depth research on the factitious intelligence discipline’s greatest heavyweights, together with Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI.
FTC Chair Lina Khan introduced the inquiry throughout the company’s tech summit on AI, describing it as a “market inquiry into the investments and partnerships being fashioned between AI builders and main cloud service suppliers.”
By invoking its authority to conduct a so-called 6(b) research — named for Section 6(b) of the FTC Act — the regulator can look into the AI corporations individually from its legislation enforcement arm and make civil investigative calls for. For instance, the company can order corporations to file particular experiences and reply questions in writing about their companies.
“At the FTC, the speedy improvement and deployment of AI is informing our work throughout the company,” Khan stated. “There’s no AI exemption from the legal guidelines on the books, and we’re looking carefully at the methods corporations could also be utilizing their energy to thwart competitors or trick the general public.”
In 2022, the FTC launched a similar inquiry into the prescription drug intermediary business, “requiring the six largest pharmacy profit managers to offer info and information relating to their enterprise practices.” Two yeas earlier, it launched the same type of study into previous acquisitions by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook (now Meta), “requiring them to offer details about prior acquisitions not reported to the antitrust companies.”
“What AI legal responsibility regimes will finally appear to be continues to be an open query,” Khan stated on Thursday. “Our enforcement expertise in different domains will instantly inform how the FTC approaches this work.”
WATCH: Regulators take on Amazon