Vestager warned that artificial intelligence is “developing at breakneck speed.” She said they have “a number of other preliminary antitrust investigations ongoing into various practices in AI-related markets,” without giving any details.
“We cannot just sit back and see how things pan out,” she said. “Now is the time to act. Strong competition enforcement is always needed at times of big industrial and tech changes.”
“It is already clear that we need to be on our guard. Over market concentration, anti-competitive behaviour, and new types of partnerships,” she said.
The Commission is worried about how Big Tech firms could use their power to build AI tools and roll them out across their ecosystems. The large foundation models behind AI services “need vast amounts of data, computing power, cloud infrastructure, and talent, which only a few players have,” Vestager said.
She also said that officials were watching “acqui-hires” where a company takes over another to scoop up talented workers, citing Microsoft and AI developer Inflection.
“We will make sure these practices don’t slip through our merger control rules,” she said.
