• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 22, 2024

The U.S. Department of Justice says it needs information from Google about its initiatives in generative artificial intelligence in order to propose a remedy to the company's monopoly in search.

“To the extent generative AI is as transformative a technology as industry-wide investments may suggest, any remedy must ensure there are no barriers to competition during the next 'paradigm shift' or 'window' of opportunity for Google’s potential search rivals,” government attorneys said in a status report filed Monday with U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C.

“Google’s generative artificial intelligence plans will help the Court better understand how Google intends to integrate generative artificial intelligence into general search,” the government adds.

The report comes around six weeks before the Justice Department is scheduled to ask Mehta to sanction Google for violating antitrust law by illegally monopolizing search engine services and search text ads.

The Justice Department is seeking documents discussing multimodal large language models developed by Google, as well as documents discussing plans to preinstall Google's generative artificial intelligence products on smartphones, and to distribute those products on the Chrome browser.

Google counters in the status report that the government's request is too broad.

“Google is actively working to develop a range of generative artificial intelligence technologies, across a wide variety of product areas, many of which have nothing to do with Google Search or Google Search Ads,” the company wrote Monday.

For instance, the company says, it is currently “developing AI solutions as disparate as analyzing traffic data in Google Maps, translating languages on Pixel devices, suggesting drafts of email replies in Gmail, organizing photographs in Google Photos, and improving wildfire detection.”

The Justice Department “cannot justify a request for custodial searches of all of Google’s generative artificial intelligence technologies--whatever their functionality and intended use--as part of this remedies proceeding,” Google writes.

Mehta is expected to hold a conference on the matter October 24.