Beijing, July 11th (Xinhua) - According to multiple media reports on the 10th, as European and American regulatory agencies strengthen antitrust scrutiny of the artificial intelligence market, Microsoft has decided to abandon its observer seat on the board of the Open Artificial Intelligence Research Center (OpenAI) in the United States.
According to Agence France Presse, Microsoft wrote a letter to OpenAI on the 9th explaining the above decision and explaining that OpenAI's management has improved since the board of directors personnel upheaval last year, so Microsoft's involvement is no longer needed. Microsoft has chosen to abandon its observer seat and has decided to take immediate effect.
According to reports, Microsoft was appointed as a non voting observer on the OpenAI board of directors after the controversy surrounding the resignation and reinstatement of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last year. According to previous reports, Microsoft supported and briefly hired Ultraman.
Microsoft is the main investor in OpenAI, and has invested at least $13 billion in OpenAI since the start of cooperation in 2019. After the aforementioned personnel controversy, antitrust agencies in Europe and the United States began to examine whether Microsoft had too much influence on the business decisions of its partner OpenAI.
Margaret Westag, the European Commission's Commissioner for Competition Affairs, has warned large technology companies that the EU will continue to scrutinize their investment in startups in the field of artificial intelligence. She said at the end of last month that the European Union is seeking more information about the cooperation agreement with OpenAI from Microsoft in order to understand "whether certain exclusive clauses will have a negative impact on competition.". Microsoft is facing similar investigations from both the UK antitrust agency and the US Federal Trade Commission. (Li Yannan)