Harmonizing Competition Regulations and Data Privacy Laws in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract: The passing of the Digital Data Protection Act, 2023 (“Act”) has been a milestone for user data privacy in India. However, the Act also holds immense importance from an anti-trust perspective. There has been a growing consensus among academicians and regulatory bodies regarding the potential threats posed by ‘Data Harvesting’ from the perspective of competition law. The Competition Commission of India (“CCI”) has already acknowledged this reality. The way user data is processed and utilized by companies is fundamentally changed by artificial intelligence, thereby rendering the traditional approach towards data protection obsolete. This paper contends that addressing anti-competitive data extraction solely through the Competition Act is overly optimistic and conveniently disregards the Law of the Second Best. This paper contends that there exists a significant overlap between privacy concerns and anti-trust concerns, and both cannot be dealt independently. The tendency of policymakers to ignore the scope of integration between the two frameworks is flawed. This paper suggests the need to acknowledge the confluence of the aforementioned areas, thereby attempting to tackle the emergent legal perils of rapid technological advancement through diverse policy instruments. In this context, the author argues for implementing responsible and mandatory data sharing (under the Competition Act) and the segmentation of consent in certain cases (under the Act).