Giuseppe Colangelo (Università degli Studi della Basilicata) and Ariel Ezrachi (U Oxford Law) have posted “AI Ecosystems, Power Shifts, and EU Competition Law Enforcement” on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The emergence of AI assistants and agents is transforming market dynamics, favouring a shift in competition away from individual products and towards integrated services, and from competition between firms to competition between ecosystems. This transition is reshaping power relations along the vertical chain; On the one hand, vertically integrated providers may deploy leveraging strategies to favour their own AI tools, and may further use these tools to extract rents from downstream intermediaries. On the other hand, the success of agentic AI and the proliferation of strategic collaborations may facilitate entry, offer new paths to market, and possibly challenge the hegemony of the established ecosystem. This paper explores these developments and the relationship between intra-ecosystem competition and inter-AI (ecosystem) competition. In doing so, it reflects on the emergence of frenemy relationship between market players, and the adequacy of current competition law analysis in evaluating complex inter-and intra AI competition.