Same Gatekeepers, New Gateway: AI Agents, Monopoly Power, and Democratic Risk
Open Markets Institute warns that tech giants could exploit their control over the AI technology stack to become even more powerful gatekeepers via AI agents — and outlines a policy roadmap to prevent it.
A new report from the Open Markets Institute warns that the technology giants dominating today's internet are positioned to control artificial intelligence agents, systems designed to make decisions and take actions on behalf of their users.
The report, ‘Same Gatekeepers, New Gateway: AI Agents, Monopoly Power, and Democratic Risk,’ examines how corporations including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta could leverage their control over cloud computing, foundation models, operating systems, browsers, online search, and digital platforms to dominate AI agents, exclude competitors, and extend their power even further across the economy and society.
The stakes are even greater than those of previous technologies. Search engines and social media platforms influence what people see and choose, while still requiring them to decide AI agents go further, selecting products, making purchases, managing communications, and carrying out other consequential tasks on people's behalf.
The companies controlling these systems could gain extraordinary influence over economic decisions, information flows, and everyday life.
The report identifies three forces that could rapidly concentrate the AI agent market:
Control over distribution: Dominant tech companies can use their operating systems, browsers, search engines, and digital platforms to favor their own agents and disadvantage independent competitors.
Data-driven lock-in: As AI agents accumulate users' personal information, preferences, and transaction histories, switching providers could become increasingly difficult, reinforcing the advantages of early market leaders.
Control over access and standards: Companies dominating the infrastructure, technical protocols, and services that AI agents depend on could determine which competitors, businesses, and publishers can participate — and on what terms.
These risks are already emerging. In Europe, regulators have intervened to guarantee AI agents’ access to essential digital platforms, including Google's Android ecosystem and Meta's WhatsApp messenger. These disputes illustrate how companies controlling existing digital gateways can suppress competition in the emerging agent market.
“Big Tech already controls much of the infrastructure that powers the internet. Now those same companies want to control the AI agents that will increasingly decide what people buy, read, and do,” said Max von Thun, Director of Open Markets Institute Europe. “If policymakers fail to act, we risk transforming today's digital gatekeepers with something even more dangerous: corporations that make choices for us. Europe has a central role to play in ensuring that this doesn’t happen.”
“As agentic systems grow more sophisticated and concentrated there is a serious risk that predictive personalization will become anticipatory persuasion,” said Dr. Courtney C. Radsch, Director of the Center for Media and Digital Governance at Open Markets. “This report offers a roadmap for preventing today's tech monopolies from becoming tomorrow's AI gatekeepers, with enforceable safeguards, real competition, and rules that put people, not corporate profits, in control."
The report calls on U.S., European, and other regulators and policymakers to:
Require interoperability and data portability so independent agents can access essential platforms and users can switch providers without losing their information and integrations.
Mandate fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory access to the infrastructure, platforms, and services agents depend on.
Establish enforceable duties of loyalty and care requiring AI agents to serve their users rather than the commercial interests of their owners.
Ensure independent technical standards through transparent, representative governance and oversight, rather than allowing dominant corporations to set the rules.
Use antitrust enforcement to stop anti-competitive practices, block or unwind anticompetitive mergers and partnerships, and pursue structural remedies where vertical integration creates conflicts of interest.
The report comes as policymakers are beginning to confront these challenges and still have time to act before agentic AI becomes entrenched. European competition authorities are addressing interoperability and access barriers involving AI services, while U.S. lawmakers have begun considering legislation to establish duties and safeguards for AI agents. The authors argue that these efforts must be part of a broader strategy to prevent concentrated control across the entire technology stack.
The report builds on earlier research by Dr. Radsch “The Battle for Cognitive Liberty in the Age of Corporate AI” and OMI Senior Fellow Sally Hubbard, “Who Do AI Agents Work For?,” which examined the need to ensure AI agents serve their users rather than their corporate owners.
“Same Gatekeepers, New Gateway” was authored by Max von Thun, Dr. Courtney C. Radsch, George Colville, and Dora Wierzbicka.
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