Trump confronts repeated boos during raucous Libertarian convention speech
Donald Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing Saturday night’s Libertarian Party National Convention.
British competition regulators said Wednesday they'll scrutinize recent artificial intelligence deals by Microsoft and Amazon over concerns that the moves could thwart competition in the AI industry.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it's looking into Microsoft's partnership with France's Mistral AI and the company's hiring of key staff from another startup, Inflection AI. The watchdog also separately announced that it's investigating Amazon's US$4 billion investment in San Francisco-based Anthropic.
Big Tech companies have been pouring money into generative AI startups amid growing public and business interest in the technology, but the investments have also drawn attention from antitrust authorities.
The U.K. watchdog said it was seeking comments from "interested third parties," before deciding whether to carry out an in-depth antitrust investigation.
"We will assess, objectively and impartially, whether each of these three deals fall within U.K. merger rules and, if they do, whether they have any impact on competition in the U.K.," the watchdog's executive director of mergers, Joel Bamford, said in a statement.
Microsoft said it will provide the watchdog with the information it needs to carry out its inquiries.
"We remain confident that common business practices such as the hiring of talent or making a fractional investment in an AI start up promote competition and are not the same as a merger," the company said.
Microsoft last month hired Mustafa Suleyman, who co-founded Google's DeepMind AI research lab, to head up its consumer artificial intelligence business, along with the chief scientist and several top engineers and researchers from Inflection, his AI startup.
Microsoft also teamed up earlier this year with Mistral, which has become France's AI darling after being founded only last year. That followed Microsoft's previous existing partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is also facing scrutiny from the CMA.
Mistral said it's "fully committed to cooperating with the CMA throughout this process to ensure that our long-term independence and access to the market are upheld."
Amazon, meanwhile, has spent billions for a minority stake in Anthropic. The two companies are collaborating to develop so-called foundation models, which underpin the generative AI systems that have captured global attention.
"It's unprecedented for the CMA to review a collaboration of this type," Amazon said in a statement. "Unlike partnerships between other AI startups and large technology companies, our collaboration with Anthropic includes a limited investment, doesn't give Amazon a board director or observer role, and continues to have Anthropic running its models on multiple cloud providers."
The CMA said it's stepping up its scrutiny of the market for foundation models after it published a report that highlighted the risk that powerful companies could use partnerships with key AI players to strengthen their positions.
Donald Trump was booed repeatedly while addressing Saturday night’s Libertarian Party National Convention.
According to some experts, there is one type of screen time that is continuously excessive, and it's having a severe effect on our children.
A year has passed since two-year-old Vienna Irwin was found on the property of a home-based daycare in small-town Ontario, but her family says they are no closer to answers of what happened that day.
Two-time PGA Tour winner Grayson Murray died Saturday morning at age 30, one day after he withdrew from the Charles Schwab Cup Challenge at Colonial.
The family of one of the victims of the Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 says they are 'thankful' for a decision by a Calgary immigration board to deport the driver of the truck involved.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has confirmed it is working with local Mounties and the BC Coroners Service after a plane crash near Squamish, B.C. Friday night.
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Three people have died after a vehicle veered off the road in Shediac N.B., Friday morning.
An Edmonton woman found guilty of trying to kill her three children has been denied an appeal.
When one is extended an invitation to the Royal Garden Party in London, England, there's undoubtedly no shortage of pomp and circumstance. Barrie, Ont. natives Megan Kirk Chang and her husband Brandon experienced just that as they entered the prestigious event hosted at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.
An unlikely celebrity emerged from social media to cheer on the Edmonton Oilers as they face the Dallas Stars tonight in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.
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When Jujhar Mann said he wanted to be a pastry chef on a grade school career project, he didn't imagine that pursuing his dream would land him on a popular Netflix baking competition.
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A Montreal photographer captured the moment a Canada goose defended itself from a fox at the Botanical Garden.
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