The FTC is looking at Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s investments

OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft: The Investments that the FTC and WIRED Used to Identify False Information in AI Software

The FTC was the first government agency to investigate OpenAI. It requested documents from the company in July to find out if there was harm to the consumer from publishing false information.

But when WIRED requested those records last month, OpenAI said its policy had changed, and the company provided only a narrow financial statement that omitted the majority of its operations.

Information on investment agreements between companies and partnerships that influence product releases and oversight rights is what the FTC wants. It also wants an analysis of how these investments impact the market share, competition, and potential for sales growth in the sector; if there is competition for resources to develop AI products; and any information each company may have given to other government entities.

The larger companies gave huge sums to both Anthropic and OpenAI. After the failed removal of CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft joined the board as a nonvoting observer and has invested in OpenAI for many years. There was a report that Microsoft invested $10 billion in Openai. This close relationship allowed Microsoft to launch GPT-4-powered applications in its Copilot service.

A lot of times, developers look to cloud providers for cheaper access to the expensive hardware that is used to train, run, and fine-tune large language models.