Character.AI and Google inked a non-exclusive licensing agreement for Google’s large language model technologies last year.
According to reports, Google is being investigated by the Justice Department again for possible antitrust violations related to its collaboration with the AI chatbot company Character.AI.
The United States Justice Department is investigating whether Alphabet’s Google’s contract with Character.AI violated antitrust laws. Bloomberg Law said Thursday that they enable the tech giant to exploit the AI startup’s technology.
Recently, Google was informed by antitrust authorities, DOJ investigators, that they are looking into how the corporation drafted the contract with Character.AI last year to evade regulatory scrutiny. According to the report, which cited persons with knowledge of the situation, AI will evade formal government merger examination.
Character.AI and Google inked a license agreement last year that gave the chatbot maker’s huge language model technology a non-exclusive license to the search engine giant.
Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, co-founders of Character.AI and former Google workers, were also employed by the startup and obtained a non-exclusive license to utilise its chatbot technology.
They are always happy to answer any questions from regulators, a Google representative stated. They are thrilled by Character.AI’s talent. Although they joined the organization, they are still a distinct business and they do not own any shares in them.
A Google representative stated in a statement that the company is always pleased to respond to inquiries from authorities. “We are happy that Character.AIi’s talent has joined the company, but they are still a separate business and we do not own any shares in them.”
Personality.A request for comment from Reuters was not immediately answered by AI, and the DOJ did not provide a response.
According to the report, the DOJ can examine whether the deal is anti-competitive even if it didn’t need a formal review. It also noted that the antitrust investigation was still in its early phases and might not result in an enforcement action.
Similar agreements have been made by other tech giants in the last year as they compete for market share in the fiercely competitive field of generative AI.
Amazon hired the co-founders and some of the employees of the AI firm Adept last June, while Microsoft signed a $650 million agreement with Inflection AI in March 2024 to use the AI startup’s algorithms and hire its employees. Both transactions have attracted regulatory attention.
Authorities are already putting pressure on Google; in two different lawsuits, the DOJ is attempting to dismantle the company’s hegemony in the digital advertising technology and online search markets.
The DOJ’s plan to require Google to disclose search data with rivals was supported earlier this month by the US Federal Trade Commission.
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