John Lopatka on Regulating AI

ICLE Academic Affiliate John Lopatka was quoted by Bloomberg Law in a story about U.S. Justice Department efforts to regulate artificial intelligence. You can read the full piece here.

AI “doesn’t easily fall within one agency’s jurisdiction as opposed to the other,” said John Lopatka, a law professor at Penn State focused on antitrust. “So I think what you would hear from DOJ is, look, this is a deal with Google, and we’re the ones that are litigating Google—so we should be the ones investigating a Google Gemini deal.”

…While a licensing deal of this nature wouldn’t automatically trigger antitrust scrutiny, Lopatka said he would be “stunned” if regulators didn’t at least launch a probe.

…Before news of the companies’ AI talks broke, Lopatka said he would have expected the Justice Department to propose a remedy in the Google search case aimed at suppressing the growth of Google and allowing Apple to emerge as a search competitor. But an AI agreement could force the DOJ to rethink its approach to breaking up a search monopoly, Lopatka added.

An AI deal between the tech behemoths could block competition in the search market, which would raise red flags for federal regulators in the Google search case, Lopatka said.

“The government would want to be cognizant of any relationship when proposing remedies,” Lopatka said.