The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC or the “Commission”) has commenced a formal inquiry into allegations concerning the use of Nigerian news content by certain digital and generative artifcial intelligence (AI) platforms (the “Inquiry”). The Inquiry has generated signi cant interest across Nigeria's technology and media sectors – and rightly so. It sits at the intersection of competition law, AI governance, data protection and the future of digital commerce in Africa's largest economy.
The Inquiry follows from a presidential directive to the FCCPC in response to a joint petition submitted by the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO), comprising the Newspaper Proprietors' Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), and the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP).
What the Inquiry Will Examine
The Commission's Inquiry will focus on three interconnected strands:
- Allegations of market dominance and potential anti-competitive conduct;
- The commercial use of journalistic content in the development and training of AI systems, including allegations of unauthorised extraction, scraping, ingestion, or commercial utilisation of copyrighted news articles, broadcast materials, and other original journalistic content for the development and training of generative AI models; and
- The commercial engagements (or lack thereof) between major digital platforms and Nigerian news publishers.
These are not discrete issues. The use of journalistic content in AI training raises copyright, licensing and contractual questions. The commercial relationship between platforms and publishers goes beyond private bargaining and disparities in bargaining power, which can have competition and market-wide implications. Competition authorities globally are increasingly assessing these issues as part of the wider operation of digital ecosystems.
FCCPC‘s Approach to Regulating AI Platforms
The Inquiry is not the FCCPC's rst attempt to regulate AI and digital platforms in Nigeria. The FCCPC relies on its broad statutory powers to regulate such entities, and these powers have been applied in certain instances, such as the joint investigation of Meta data protection practices in Nigeria. For instance, the FCCPC earlier this year issued a “Draft Guidance Note on AI-Generated and Digitally Altered Content in Consumer Communications”, setting out how existing prohibitions on false, misleading, and deceptive representations apply to AI generated and digitally altered content.
The FCCPC, in exercising its broad statutory powers to protect consumer interests, may also seek to legislate that emerging or new technologies be replaced with safer and more appropriate alternatives or provide that such services be removed from the market. This empowers it to address AI governance and ethical issues, data/content and personal data protection issues affecting consumers.
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