Conversational AI: Competition Authority Opinion

With more than 60% increase in the number of users in 2024, the use of conversational tools is booming in France around services such as ChatGPT from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Le “Chat” from Mistral AI, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. In this context, the Competition Authority announced on Friday that it was taking up the subject of conversational agents. Ambition? Analyze the competitive functioning of this sector “located downstream of the value chain”, points out the body, thus taking into account “the latest developments” which show that these “could have an impact on the competitive functioning of several key sectors of the economy”. For the Authority, conversational agents raise many questions, notably “on its competitive structure, on the economic models adopted by the players or even on the opportunities offered to other economic sectors”. From then on, it plans to focus on “new issues” which appear in particular linked to the use of conversational agents in the online commerce sector, also called “agentic commerce”. On the other hand, underlines the Authority in its announcement, the relationship between conversational agents and search engines is not part of the scope of the upcoming opinion. It will launch a public consultation “soon” and will deliver its opinion during the year 2026.