The antitrust authority in Britain is examining the collaboration between Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, assessing its implications for market competition, as announced by the regulator on Tuesday.

Following the significant surge in artificial intelligence development initiated by Microsoft-supported OpenAI with the launch of ChatGPT over 18 months ago, global antitrust officials have grown increasingly wary of various agreements formed between smaller tech startups and major technology corporations.

The deals currently under investigation encompass Microsoft's alliances with startups like OpenAI, Inflection AI, and Mistral AI, in addition to Alphabet's connections with other emerging firms such as Anthropic and Cohere.

Anthropic's Claude AI models have been competing for dominance against OpenAI's GPT series.

Recently, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of Britain, along with its counterparts in the United States and the European Union, released a joint statement pledging to collaborate in order to uphold fair competition within the AI industry.

Anthropic, co-founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei, announced last year that it had received a $500 million investment from Alphabet, with a promise of an additional $1.5 billion in the future. Anthropic also utilizes Alphabet's Google Cloud services in its operations.

The CMA is currently soliciting opinions on whether the partnership between Alphabet and Anthropic could potentially stifle competition in the UK, with a deadline set for comments by August 13th.

A representative from Anthropic stated that the organization intends to collaborate with the CMA and offer a comprehensive overview of its alliance with Google. "We operate as an independent entity, and none of our strategic collaborations or investor affiliations compromise the autonomy of our corporate governance or our ability to engage with other partners," they remarked.

The CMA will determine whether to initiate a formal investigation following the conclusion of this process. A spokesperson for Google commented, "Google is dedicated to fostering the most open and innovative AI ecosystem globally.

Anthropic has the freedom to utilize various cloud service providers, and they do so; we do not impose any requirements for exclusive technological rights."