Europe wants stricter regulation of AI companies to ensure fair competition
Dirk Beljaarts, the Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs, will join Germany and France in a plea for tighter regulation of AI companies, comparable to the current regulations for large social media companies. The initiative is part of a broader European plan to strengthen its competitive position relative to the United States and China.
During the international AI Action Summit in Paris, Beljaarts announced his and his colleagues' proposal to amend the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This law, which already regulates tech giants like Google and Meta, should also apply to AI companies like OpenAI. Beljaarts says this step is necessary to promote healthy competition and to prevent promising European AI start-ups from being bought up by foreign Big Tech companies. Besides the DMA, Europe already has the AI Act, which focuses on high-risk uses like facial recognition. However, according to the Minister, this law does not offer sufficient protection against market concentration.
Another important objective of the plan is to protect European values and digital sovereignty. Beljaarts emphasizes that training AI models on European data is essential to develop technologies that are better aligned with European culture and safety standards. While major challenges remain, such as access to sufficient computing power and capital investment, a growing European initiative named OpenEuroLLM has emerged. With an initial budget of 37 million euros, this collaboration between businesses and universities aims to compete with American AI models like ChatGPT and Gemini.
NPM Capital invests in companies within the themes that are shaping the future of our world. This news fits within our theme Everything is Digital. The article is based on an interview with Minister Beljaarts in De Volkskrant of February 8th, written by Laurens Verhagen.
