The comments by Microsoft were in response to a consultation
launched by the European Commission in January on the level of competition in
generative AI.
The growing popularity of generative AI, which can generate
human-like responses to written prompts and is exemplified by Microsoft-backed
OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's chatbot Gemini, has triggered concerns about
misinformation and fake news.
"Today, only one company - Google - is vertically
integrated in a manner that provides it with strength and independence at every
AI layer from chips to a thriving mobile app store. Everyone else must rely on
partnerships to innovate and compete," Microsoft said in its report to the
Commission.
It said Google's self-supply AI semiconductors would give it
a competitive advantage for the years to come, while its large sets of
proprietary data from Google Search Index and YouTube enabled it to train its
large language model Gemini.
"YouTube provides an unparalleled set of video content;
it hosts an estimated 14 billion videos. Google has access to such content; but
other AI developers do not," Microsoft said.
It said AI-powered voice assistants such as Google's Google
Assistant and Apple's Siri give both companies an advantage.
"They are well-positioned to evolve and leverage their
respective existing voice assistants into leadership positions in generative
AI. New entrants and competitors of Google and Apple will not enjoy the same
advantages," Microsoft said.
Google hit back at Microsoft.
"We hope the Commission's study will shine a light on
companies that don't offer the openness of Google Cloud or have a long history
of locking-in customers - and who are bringing that same approach to AI
services," a Google spokesperson said.
Microsoft, whose more than $10 billion investment in OpenAI
is now in EU antitrust regulators' crosshairs, also sought to fend off
regulatory worries about such partnerships between Big Tech and start-ups.
"All of these start-ups relied on different forms of
investments and partnerships that enabled them to enter and expand in the
space," it said.
It pointed to Anthropic which has Google and Amazon as
investors, France's Mistral in which Microsoft has invested 15 billion euros
and Canada's Cohere which has Salesforce and Nvidia as investors.
"Encouraging pro-competitive partnerships in the AI space is an effective way to prevent companies from becoming vertically integrated in a manner that would result in an anticompetitive advantage," Microsoft said. -Reuters
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