US Senators Argue Generative AI Harms Content Creators and Violates Antitrust Laws

Governments worldwide are grappling with generative artificial intelligence (AI) and how to deal with it. In the United States, movement has been generally slow and limited. A group of Senators have joined to urge the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate generative AI products for antitrust violations.

As Engadget reports, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, along with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (R-DI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN) sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter outlining “the risks that new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features pose to competition and innovation in digital content, including journalism, and to urge both agencies to investigate whether the design of these features violates the antitrust laws.”

“Recently, multiple dominant online platforms have introduced new generative AI features that answer user queries by summarizing, or, in some cases, merely regurgitating online content from other sources or platforms. The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work,” the letter explains.

“While a traditional search result or news feed links may lead users to the publisher’s website, an AI-generated summary keeps the users on the original search platform, where that platform alone can profit from the user’s attention through advertising and data collection. Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform’s AI.”

‘The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work.’

The lawmakers added that for the reasons above, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the FTC should investigate whether some generative AI features, “introduced by already dominant platforms,” constitute exclusionary conduct and unfair competition, which violate American antitrust laws.

The crux of the issue is generative AI technology’s ability to “merely regurgitate” content written by real people, including small, local journalists. Klobuchar and others argue that this threatens “the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work.”

“Local news is facing a crisis. A recent study found that the U.S. has lost approximately 2,900 newspapers, and that a third of the newspapers that existed in 2005 will have disappeared by the end of this year,” the letter explains. “At the same time, dominant online platforms, such as Google and Meta, generate billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue from news and other original content created by others. New generative AI features threaten to exacerbate these problems.”

‘Some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform’s AI.’

The lawmakers argue that if generative AI technology is scraping existing, human-created online content and then cherry-picking bits and pieces, without necessarily citing the source, it constitutes exclusionary, anti-competitive conduct.

It isn’t just the small news players under threat; even significant stalwarts in the field face risks. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft late last year in response to OpenAI using NYT articles to train AI technology like ChatGPT.

“Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism,” NYT‘s complaint explained. This free-ride problem is arguably harmful to all news organizations.

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