Tech Giants Engage in Content Battle for AI Development, Microsoft CEO Reveals

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in a U.S. antitrust trial against Google, stating that tech giants are competing for content to train their artificial intelligence (AI) models. Nadella criticized Google for locking up content through expensive and exclusive deals with publishers. He emphasized the importance of content libraries for training large language models and compared the situation to early distribution deals. The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust case against Google focuses on distribution agreements, alleging that Google illegally pays billions to be the default search engine on devices. Nadella also revealed that Microsoft had tried to make its Bing search engine the default on Apple smartphones but was rejected.