ACCC's timely AI warning puts focus on Treasury's competition review
The ACCC has warned that rapid advances in immersive tech and generative AI raise risks of anticompetitive behaviour by Big Tech.
The Australian competition regulator has raised fresh concerns that the rise of generative artificial intelligence could entrench the dominance of Big Tech platforms over the digital economy. But beyond banging the drum for new competition laws it recommended more than a year ago, the ACCC made no additional recommendations to deal with the problem.
In its latest digital platforms report - the seventh in a six-monthly series running through to the ACCC March 2025 - the competition regulator examined Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft's continued expansion across services and into new technologies, and the risks this poses to consumers and competition.
And at a time of heightened interest in the topic, the report highlighted AI and generative AI examples of product expansions that could cement the dominant positions of these firms in the economy.
"AI technologies are embedded in a huge variety of products and services that consumers rely upon every day, such as translation services, spell check and autocomplete services, updating traffic information in mapping services and understanding voice commands," the 230-page report said.
