The Competition Commission has published the terms of reference for a market inquiry into the distribution of media on digital platforms in South Africa – which includes the impact of artificial intelligence and platforms like ChatGPT on media and publishers in the country.
Similar to inquiries done in countries like Australia, the commission’s main concern is over dominance by platforms like Google and Meta and how search engines, social media sites and video-sharing platforms use and aggregate publisher and media content, but without permission or compensation to media houses and publishers.
In February 2023, Microsoft announced that it had partnered with OpenAI to utilise the ChatGPT chatbot model in its Bing search engine. Around the same time, Google announced it had launched its own chatbot model, Bard, that would be integrated with its search engine. “Furthermore, South African news publishers’ content may also be used to train these AI systems without authorisation or compensation. This was confirmed by ChatGPT itself in response to that query,” it said.
“Whilst digital advertising revenue has increased, and there is potential for aggregator content revenues, the features of digital platform markets can influence the magnitude of these revenue streams, which is what the inquiry intends to consider.”