Senate leaders ask FTC to investigate AI content summaries as anti-competitive

A group of Democratic senators is urging the FTC and Justice Department to investigate whether AI tools that summarize and regurgitate online content like news and recipes may amount to anti-competitive practices.

In a letter to the agencies, the senators, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), explained their position that the latest AI features are hitting creators and publishers while they’re down.

As journalistic outlets experience unprecedented consolidation and layoffs, “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.”

The letter continues:

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.

Publishers who wish to avoid having their content summarized in the form of AI-generated search results can only do so if they opt out of being indexed for search completely, which would result in a materially significant drop in referral traffic. In short, these tools may pit content creators against themselves without any recourse to profit from AI-generated content that was composed using their original content. This raises significant competitive concerns in the online marketplace for content and advertising revenues.

Essentially, the senators are saying that a handful of major companies control the market for monetizing original content via advertising, and that those companies are rigging that market in their favor. Either you consent to having your articles, recipes, stories, and podcast transcripts indexed and used as raw material for an AI, or you’re cut out of the loop.

The letter goes on to ask the FTC and DOJ to investigate whether these new methods are “a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws.”

Though it’s clearly a serious issue — and one that affects this outlet — the FTC may have its work cut out for it here. While AI summaries of web content may provide highly lopsided benefits, there are many power relationships in play in business and media, and the bar for anticompetitive behavior is quite high.

For instance, in this case, it would have to be shown that the AI makers have overwhelming market power and that they are using that power in ways specifically forbidden by law. Something can be unfair, unethical, and perfectly legal.

Considering how hawkish the FTC is on these matters already, however, it’s likely that Sen. Klobuchar and her colleagues are preaching to the choir as a prelude to taking action of their own. Klobuchar herself, watching out for journalism and local papers especially, introduced a bill last year aimed to empowering the supply side of news licensing negotiations and giving news outlets a bit more clout when asking Google or whoever to pay for their content.

Fast forward a year and the concerns of 2022 and early 2023 look quaint: the same companies accused of strong-arming content providers are now, many argue, circumventing the whole market by feeding the content to the AI for summaries.

Asking the regulators to take a swing at an industry’s undesirable behaviors is part of a paper trail that legislators leave when trying to make a law. If the FTC and DOJ find they can’t act, it clears the signatories of this letter to propose a new law so that those agencies can act. While last year’s save-the-papers bill didn’t go far, a new one tied to fears about AI overlords might do better — certainly it’s a good talking point for the election cycle.

The letter was co-signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN).