By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS, April 27 (Reuters) – Alphabet’s Google was given pointers by EU antitrust regulators on Monday on how to help online search rivals and artificial intelligence developers access its services such as those available to its Gemini AI model under rules aimed at reining in Big Tech.
The move by the European Commission, which acts as the EU competition enforcer, came three months after the regulator opened a so-called specification proceeding to assist the world’s most popular internet search engine comply with the Digital Markets Act.
“Today’s proposed measures will give more choice to Android users about the AI services they use and integrate in their phone, including from the vast range of AI services that compete with Google’s own AI,” EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement.
Google criticised the EU proposal, saying Android has an open ecosystem enabling AI assistants to thrive and device makers to have full autonomy to customise their AI services.
“This unwarranted intervention would strip away that autonomy, mandate access to sensitive hardware and device permissions; unnecessarily driving up costs while undermining critical privacy and security protections for European users,” Clare Kelly, the company’s Senior Competition Counsel, said in an email.
Regulators said Google currently keeps the use of key capabilities in its Android mobile operating system for its Gemini AI service on smartphones and tablets.
They said the proposed measures would ensure that competing AI services can effectively interact with applications on users’ Android devices and execute tasks accordingly, such as sending an email using the user’s preferred email app, ordering food or sharing a photo with friends.
The Commission said third parties have until May 13 to provide feedback before it issues a final decision by the end of July on whether Google complies with the DMA. Breaches can cost companies fines worth as much as 10% of their annual global sales.
Earlier this month, Google was also given instructions on how to allow rival search engines including AI chatbots access its search data as part of its DMA compliance efforts.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, editing by Inti Landauro)
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