Microsoft Will Need To Do A Lot More To Get On The Good Side Of Regulators

After the initial pop upon the pricing of its AI service and deepening its AI partnership with Meta Platforms META, Microsoft Corporation has been hit with an EU lawsuit.

First Salesforce, Now Alfaview - Although With A Delay, Regulators Are Taking Action

On July 20th, Microsoft was on the receiving end of the EU antitrust complaint by German rival Alfaview. This is the second legal action over Microsoft’s bundling of its Teams app with its Office offerings. The U.S. software titan has been on the radar of EU regulators since 2020, when Salesforce Inc CRM urged regulators to take immediate action for fears its messaging app of the same nature Slack is threatened. It took regulators a while to reach, with Slack being crushed in the meantime as it gathered only a tiny fraction of users compares to Teams, but they are going after Microsoft now, as German Alfaview filed a similar complaint to the European commission, stating that rivals are unable to match Microsoft’s offering due to its size, with its competitive advantage being owed to its dominance as opposed to performance. This legal action can have a deep impact on the communications software market with Microsoft now being subject to an informal probe, according to Reuters. Reuters reported that Microsoft spokesperson stated that the software titan is cooperating with the Commission and remaining open to address its concerns as it aims to service its users to the best of its knowledge. As Alfaview found Microsoft’s remedies offered during the unofficial probe to be insufficient, it urged the EU antitrust regulators to open a formal investigation. 

Expanded AI Partnership With Meta – Llama 2 On Azure And Windows

Earlier this week, Meta and Microsoft announced they are deepening their partnership for the Llama 2 family of large language models (LLMs). With Llama 2, developers and organizations are able to create generative AI-powered experiences. What Meta and Microsoft have in common is their commitment to democratize AI and therefore, an open approach that they both endorse. As remaining AI players, both Meta and Microsoft have commited to a responsible approach to AI development. 

Efforts To Ensure The Safety Of AI Development

In its blog post today, Microsoft welcomed President Biden’s leadership in bringing tech players together to define concrete steps to make AI safer, more secure and for it to actually serve the general public as serving the greater good was often missed on Big Tech's agenda, especially Meta's back in the days of the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. For this purpose, Microsoft, along with other AI players, including OpenAI, Meta, Amazon.com Inc AMZN and Alphabet GOOG, has made voluntary commitments to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content. The above companies pledged to test systems before releasing them as well as to share the knowledge for reducing cybersecurity risks, which is seen as a win for the Biden administration in its effort to regulate this developing technology. Back in June, U.S. Senate Majority Chuck called for comprehensive legislation to advance and ensure AI safeguards.

Therefore, it will take a lot more for Microsoft to get on the good side of regulators. 

DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only. It is not intended as investing advice.