Tech giants battling for content to build AI

Fair call: Nadella arrives at federal court in Washington. The Microsoft chief executive is testifying in the antitrust trial to determine if Alphabet Inc’s Google maintains a monopoly in the online search business, which is expected to last into November. — AFP

WASHINGTON: Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella says tech giants were competing for vast troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence (AI), and complained Google was locking up content with expensive and exclusive deals with publishers.

Testifying in a landmark US trial against its rival Google, the first major antitrust case brought by the United States since it sued Microsoft in 1998, Nadella testified the tech giant’s efforts to build content libraries to train their large language models “reminds me of the early phases of distribution deals”.