Artificial Intelligence and Unfair Competition – Unveiling an Underestimated Building Block of the AI Regulation Landscape

Abstract

The article illustrates the underestimated role unfair competition law (UCL) can play as a building block of the regulatory landscape relating to Artificial Intelligence (AI). To this end, it examines to what extent overarching prominent principles of AI regulation such as Fairness, Transparency, Autonomy or Innovation are reflected in paradigms of UCL and on this basis evaluates how the latter can contribute to the realization of the former. In this course, prominent problems raised by AI that are commonly discussed under different legal regimes are reconsidered under a UCL perspective, showing that this perspective may both complement or even substitute traditional regulatory approaches. Finally, the article indicates how AI could inversely give impulses for the doctrinal advancement of UCL as a still ambiguous and insufficiently understood body of law.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Unfair Competition, AI regulation, AI principles, AI ethics, Fairness, Transparency, Personalization, Autonomy, Accountability, Breach of Statutory Duty, Innovation, Misappropriation, Data access