OpenAI, Microsoft, and the FTC: Artificial Intelligence Partnerships with the Openai Group and The OpenAI Enterprise Cloud Platform

The first government agency to investigate was the FTC. It requested documents from the ChatGPT maker in July seeking information on possible consumer harm from publishing false information.

“We provide financial statements when requested,” company spokesperson Niko Felix says. “OpenAI aligns our practices with industry standards, and since 2022 that includes not publicly distributing additional internal documents.”

The FTC wants information on the specific investment agreements between the companies and how the partnerships influence product releases and oversight rights. It wants to know how these investments affect the market’s share, competition, and potential for sales growth, and if there is any competition for resources to develop Artificial Intelligence products.

Both Anthropic and OpenAI got huge sums from the larger companies. Microsoft, Openai’s biggest investor, recently joined its board in a nonvoting observer role, even though the company’s CEO Sam Altman was removed after less than a year at the helm. Microsoft was rumored to have invested $10 billion in OpenAI. This close relationship allowed Microsoft to launch GPT-4-powered applications in its Copilot service.

There are partnerships between cloud providers and artificial intelligence Developers can get cheaper access to the expensive graphics processing units and chips that are needed for large models by using the cloud providers.