Collaborations aim to enhance AI training through access to structured consumer data and behaviors.
OpenAI has recently formed partnerships with notable e-commerce platforms like Shopee and Shopify, while tech giants Google and Perplexity have extended free access to their advanced AI tools to users in India. These developments indicate a strategic effort among leading AI companies to gather real-world data that is not readily available through online scraping.
Over the past couple of months, these alliances have garnered attention as they promise to provide essential insights into structured consumer queries, product behaviors, and transactional data. Such information is crucial for training AI models, as experts suggest it is often missing from publicly accessible data sources. Sameer Patil, director of the Centre for Security, Strategy & Technology at the Observer Research Foundation, highlighted that these partnerships could yield diverse data sets, enhancing the accuracy of AI outputs and encouraging innovation in sectors that prioritize hyper-customization and personalization, such as fintech and healthcare.
Oliver Jay, managing director of OpenAI International, emphasized the significance of Asia’s young, tech-savvy demographic and high mobile penetration, describing it as a rapidly growing market for AI adoption. He expressed optimism about collaborating with Sea, a partner in the initiative, to leverage OpenAI’s capabilities in commerce and equip businesses with more efficient operational tools.
While these companies have not disclosed specific reasons for their partnerships or the rationale behind offering free access to their tools, their privacy policies indicate that they collect user data to enhance user experience, manage accounts, and train their AI models. Notably, users have the option to opt out of sharing their data for model training.
China’s experience illustrates the competitive advantage gained through access to industry-specific data. Reports have indicated that Chinese AI drug discovery firms have secured multibillion-dollar contracts with major pharmaceutical companies, bolstered by access to a comprehensive data set stemming from the national health insurance system, which covers over 600 million individuals. This situation has been described as a ‘structural advantage’ due to the extensive patient pool available for training AI models.
In India, Google and Perplexity have begun to see positive results from their free offerings. For instance, after Perplexity announced its partnership with Bharti Airtel, it experienced a significant increase in monthly downloads, rising from 790,000 in June to 6.69 million in July, according to data from Sensor Tower. Users, including data scientist P Sahay, have reported utilizing these tools for non-sensitive tasks such as drafting emails and conducting market research, raising questions about their awareness of data collection policies.
Despite the enthusiasm for these AI innovations, experts express concern regarding issues of data sovereignty. Several developing nations, including India and Nigeria, are advocating for local storage of citizens’ information to counter the dominance of Big Tech in global data ecosystems. Patil called for strong regulatory measures to safeguard privacy and ensure fairness in data usage, suggesting that participating companies should focus on non-personalized and anonymized data sets, along with robust oversight to prevent biases in data collection practices.
The competitive landscape continues to evolve, highlighted by Perplexity’s recent offer to acquire Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion, a proposal nearly double its current valuation of $18 billion. As AI companies navigate these partnerships and challenges, the future of their collaborative efforts remains to be seen.
