AI under digital competition law

AS THE GOVERNMENT redrafts the Digital Competition Bill (DCB) to align it more closely with market realities, it may explicitly extend the proposed special antitrust regime for the digital economy to the field of artificial intelligence (AI).

- MANU KAUSHIK

In its original form, the draft DCB outlined nine pre-identified core digital services (CDS)—including operating systems, online search engines, social networking services, web browsers, and cloud services—as potential areas for regulation. Under the initial draft, Big Tech firms that meet specified financial and user-base thresholds and offer one or more of these services would be subjected to "ex-ante regulations."

The government is now discussing internally and with various stakeholders whether such a proactive approach—unlike conventional regulations in the real economy and financial sector, where contraventions are addressed only after they occur—should be applied to the digital sector.

The DCB, modelled on the UK Digital Markets Act, is being comprehensively redrafted in this context. A new version may add AI as another CDS to be regulated, sources said.

"THE GOVERNMENT IS free to stimulate AI-specific obligations under DCB. In the current construct of the draft DCB, the obligations are outlined but the government can pick and choose core digital services," a senior official told FE.

Ex-ante regulations require businesses to follow specific obligations and guidelines to ensure fair competition, whereas most competition regulations are ex-post in nature.