The Competition Commission of South Africa disclosed on Tuesday it will look into allegations that ad-supported internet platforms like Meta and Google unfairly competed with news publishers by utilising their content to generate revenue.
The Commission will look into, among other things, market characteristics that could distort competition between news media companies and digital platforms for advertising revenue, as well as if they are impacted by inequalities in bargaining power.
The investigation will cover general search engines like Google and Bing from Alphabet, social media sites like Meta and X, news aggregation sites, video sharing sites like YouTube and TikTok, and advertising networks like Google Ads.
The Commission noted that it will also look into generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and how they produce original journalistic material.
