Major tech companies agree to voluntary measures for safer AI

Seven leading AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta have made a number of voluntary commitments to safer AI. The commitments, made to the White House, include a “watermark” system to label content that has been generated by AI. The voluntary measures also relate to data privacy and information accuracy. The announcement comes as the White House will host talks with executives from the seven companies, which also include Amazon, Inflection and Anthropic, to discuss regulation of the emerging technology.

Read more below for a round-up of the other major tech policy stories currently shaping the industry.

The FTC withdrew its case against Microsoft’s Activision acquisition before an internal judge on Thursday. The internal FTC court proceedings were initiated by the agency alongside a lawsuit filed against Microsoft in a US district court. The decision to withdraw the internal case follows the FTC’s lawsuit being rejected in a district court and appeals court earlier in the month. The withdrawal of the internal case came as the UK CMA issued a statement that they are currently awaiting a restructured deal proposal from Microsoft to assess whether it has addressed their antitrust concerns.

Video conferencing software company Alfaview has made an antitrust complaint against Microsoft to the EU Commission. The German software company’s complaint follows FT reports of an EU antitrust probe earlier in the week into Microsoft’s bundling of Office 365 with Teams. A similar complaint was made by Slack in 2020 alleging that the bundling of software and the lack of interoperability with other messaging platforms had an anticompetitive effect. In a statement, Alfaview’s CEO Niko Fostiropoulos said “Tying Teams with the other applications in the Microsoft 365 suite creates a multipolar distribution advantage for the U.S. group".

FTX sued former executives including Sam Bankman-Fried claiming that more than $1bn was misappropriated from the company leading to its 2022 bankruptcy. The lawsuit, filed in a bankruptcy court in Delaware, alleges misappropriation of funds from the trading platform and describes the events preceding the bankruptcy as "one of the largest financial frauds in history." John Ray is managing FTX’s bankruptcy having previously chaired Enron after the company’s bankruptcy in 2001. FTX has claimed that the misappropriation of funds occurred between February 2020 and November 2022 and included a gift of $10mn to Bankman-Fried’s father which, FTX says, is funding his legal defence.

The Bank of Japan has begun discussions with companies on a central bank digital currency. The latest stage of the Digital Yen pilot program, launched in April, will explore practical aspects of a state-issued digital currency in consultation with leading Japanese companies including Sony, Toyota and East Japan Railway. When the program was launched earlier in the year, Shinichi Uchida, the Bank’s Executive Director stated “exploring its framework in such a phased manner and engaging in highly transparent communication with the private sector are necessary steps to take for adoption in society”. The latest phase of the pilot program follows a report by the Bank for International Settlements that found that 24 central banks will have digital currencies by 2030.

Reporting by?Nick Scott. For longer reads:

EU and US diverge in crypto regulation approach?by Mathew Neil

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