As Washington’s antitrust enforcers double down on Big Tech, a new factor is poised to upend their strategy: artificial intelligence. The Department of Justice’s recent victory against Google was hailed as proof that the government’s more aggressive approach to competition is working.
But the same cannot necessarily be said for other pending antitrust complaints. In fact, the emergence of AI could weaken the Federal Trade Commission’s high-profile case against Amazon, for example, because this time, AI is already changing the market in real time.
Judge Amit Mehta’s decision in the Google search case found that the company maintained a monopoly over general search services and text advertising. But his opinion also contained a subtle caveat. Although AI could one day transform search, he wrote, it hadn’t yet done so and isn’t certain to do so in the “foreseeable future.” In other words, AI could not be fully considered a competitive factor because its effect on search is not imminent enough to reshape current competition.
Tirzah Duren is the President and CEO of the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.