500 million for Anthropic

UK: Competition authority investigates Google’s AI partnership

Google is currently engaged in an AI arms race with Microsoft.

(Bild: dpa/Ole Spata)

Artificial intelligence is becoming a case for the competition authorities in London. The British competition authority is taking a closer look at the partnership between the US internet company Google and the AI developer Anthropic as part of the AI arms race between US IT giants.

The CMA announced on Thursday that the first phase of the investigation should be completed by December 19. The authority had already begun collecting evidence of possible distortions of competition in July.

US OpenAI rival Anthropic received a 500 million dollar (464 million euro) cash injection from Google last year. The Alphabet subsidiary also agreed to invest a further 1.5 billion dollars in the artificial intelligence (AI) developer "Claude".

Arms race with Microsoft
Google is engaged in an arms race in the AI sector with its competitor Microsoft, which for its part has invested heavily in the ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Both companies are vying for customers with AI chatbots and are rapidly expanding their AI-supported offerings. 

At Microsoft, AI functions have found their way into Office programs, Windows and the Bing search engine; the offerings are marketed as "Copilot". Google is countering this with the AI tool "Gemini", which translates, logs conversations or manipulates photos on a range of high-priced Android phones. Apple has also recently entered the arms race, but the AI functions of "Apple Intelligence" are not due to be launched in the EU until 2025.