This article was published on the ChosunBiz RM report site at 5 p.m. on March 10, 2025.
The Fair Trade Commission is conducting a fact-finding survey targeting major corporations at home and abroad, including Meta, Naver, and Kakao, to investigate competitive restrictions in the AI data market. Following an overview of the AI industry last year, this year it plans to focus on anti-competitive elements that may arise during the data collection and usage process. As the AI market is rapidly changing, it will examine whether data monopolies or access restrictions hinder fair competition and propose policy directions.
According to the government on the 11th, the Fair Trade Commission plans to publish a policy report related to the AI data market as early as October. The report will focus on analyzing competitive restrictions that may arise in the data collection, utilization, and accumulation processes essential for AI model training. In particular, as AI technology advances, data has emerged as a key resource that determines market share among corporations, prompting plans to verify whether data access restrictions are blocking market entry for startups.
AI data is a key element in the development of large-scale language models (LLM) and, along with computing infrastructure and specialized personnel, constitutes an essential resource in the AI ecosystem. The performance of AI models is determined by the quantity and quality of training data, making it more likely that corporations with vast amounts of data will dominate the market. The Fair Trade Commission plans to look into whether domestic and international big tech corporations are monopolizing data or blocking competitors' access to data to seize market control.
According to a report published last year by the Fair Trade Commission titled 'Competition and Generative AI', some corporations reported experiences of being refused data transactions in the AI fact-finding survey. A major reason cited was that 'data owners consider their data as a competitive advantage or are concerned about potential competitors entering the market.' The Fair Trade Commission believes that such data access restrictions could act as new forms of competitive barriers within the AI ecosystem.
This issue is also emerging as a major concern overseas. According to the Fair Trade Commission report, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) analyzed that companies holding data tend to provide their data access and usage rights, transforming it into a major revenue source. As monetization through data transactions expands, there are concerns that data costs may rise in the future. The Fair Trade Commission will also analyze the impact of the data monetization strategies of not only domestic corporations but also global big tech companies on competition in the AI market.
In addition, the Fair Trade Commission plans to conduct a legal review to determine whether competitive restrictions in the AI data market may constitute an abuse of dominant market position or unfair trading practices under Fair Trade Law. In 2019, the German competition authority judged Facebook's actions of collecting and utilizing user data based on service terms as an abuse of dominant market position and imposed corrective measures. The Fair Trade Commission plans to analyze whether similar data utilization methods are acting as barriers to competition among AI corporations. It will also examine the potential for data monopolies leading to price increases in AI services and hindrances to innovation.
There is also interest in whether the Fair Trade Commission will actually begin investigations following the publication of the report. Not only Naver, Kakao, and Coupang but also global big tech companies like Google, Apple, and Meta are likely to be subjects of the Fair Trade Commission's investigation. If their data utilization methods are subject to scrutiny for potential violations of Fair Trade Law, it is expected to significantly impact not only the domestic but also the global AI market.
A Fair Trade Commission official said, 'We will continuously monitor data collection practices between corporations and users as well as data transaction practices among corporations to ensure they do not undermine fair competition.'