U.S. antitrust authorities are closely watching the artificial intelligence industry for anticompetitive practices as part of the Trump administration’s broader push to secure American leadership in AI, a senior Justice Department official said on Thursday.
Speaking at Fordham University, Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater emphasized that protecting competition in the AI sector is key to fostering innovation. “The competitive dynamics of each layer of the AI stack and how they interrelate, with a particular eye towards exclusionary behavior that forecloses access to key inputs and distribution channels, are legitimate areas for antitrust inquiry,” she said.
One major focus will be access to data. Slater noted that a judge in Washington recently ordered Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O) to share some search data with rivals, including AI firms, to strengthen competition in online search. Google has said it will appeal the ruling.
Slater added that demand for data could fuel vertical integration—mergers between companies and their suppliers—especially in sensitive areas such as healthcare. “We may also increasingly see the desire to acquire data, or to deprive rivals of data, play a role in driving transactions,” she said.
Open-source AI models are another area of interest. Slater said such models can enhance competition, but stressed that “a truly open-source model must be one that is not unilaterally maintained by a single vendor that exerts unwarranted influence and impose restrictions.”
Concerns about AI competition were also voiced during President Joe Biden’s administration, which scrutinized Big Tech’s partnerships with AI startups. Trump’s AI plan, however, explicitly ties antitrust enforcement to the goal of strengthening U.S. dominance in the sector.