Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu has ordered the country’s competition regulator to investigate major tech companies and AI platforms for alleged anti-competitive practices, unlawful use of news content and other potentially unfair market practices. The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) announced this on Monday.
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The FCCPC said the investigation was at the direction of the President following a joint petition addressed to the Office of the President by the Nigerian Press Organization (NPO), an umbrella organization of journalists, newspaper publishers and online publishers. The NPO is increasingly concerned about the practices of large tech companies such as Meta, Alphabet, X (formerly Twitter) and certain AI platforms. “It accuses them (tech companies) of practices that can undermine fair competition, the economic viability of Nigerian media organizations and the legitimate rights of creators and publishers,” the FCCPC statement said.
Suspicion of market dominance
According to the FCCPC, the focus of the investigation that has now been initiated is the allegation that “the affected media organizations were not given adequate opportunities to negotiate fair remuneration or suitable commercial agreements for the use of their journalistic content”. There is also suspicion of market dominance and potentially anti-competitive behavior. The Meta Group is accused of the unauthorized extraction, scraping, acquisition and commercial use of copyrighted news articles, radio reports and other original journalistic content for the development and training of generative AI models.
The FCCPC will investigate whether the practices in question constitute a violation of Nigeria’s competition and consumer protection laws or other laws. The authority’s deputy chief executive and chief executive officer, Tunji Bello, promised an independent, transparent and fact-based investigation. “This investigation does not allege any wrongdoing by any company,” he emphasized. “Rather, it offers the opportunity to carefully examine the facts, listen to all those affected and determine whether certain conduct has led to anti-competitive consequences or unfair business practices.”
Numerous procedures
The FCCPC says it has already investigated Meta in the past. Last year, the Facebook Group was fined $220 million in Nigeria in a landmark trial for data protection violations. Meta appealed the sentence.
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In numerous countries, media companies and authors have launched investigations or lawsuits against tech companies for using their material to train AI models without authorization. In March, Encyclopædia Britannica sued OpenAI over AI training. The famous online encyclopedia accuses the ChatGPT developer of massive copyright and trademark violations and is demanding compensation. The New York Times, in turn, accuses OpenAI of having illegally used articles from the newspaper for AI training. PCMag and IGN’s parent company, media outlet Ziff Davis, also sued OpenAI for copyright infringement, as did several major Indian media outlets and a coalition of major Canadian media outlets.
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