FTC Reviewing Competition, Deception in Artificial Intelligence

The US Federal Trade Commission is paying close attention to developments in artificial intelligence to ensure the field isn’t dominated by the major tech platforms, Chair Lina Khan said Monday.

“As you have machine learning that depends on huge amounts of data and also a huge amount of storage, we need to be very vigilant to make sure that this is not just another site for big companies to become bigger,” Khan said at an event hosted by the Justice Department in Washington.

The FTC – which enforces both competition and consumer protection laws – launched an inquiry focused on cloud computing this month, seeking information on data security and competition in the industry. Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. are among the biggest cloud providers.

Khan said companies offering AI tools need to make sure they are not “overselling or overstating” what their products can do.

“Sometimes we see claims that are not fully vetted or not really reflecting how these technologies work,” Khan said, noting recent guidance from the agency on AI-enabled products. “Developers of these tools can potentially be liable if technologies they are creating are effectively designed to deceive.”

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Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

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