France: Competition Authority announced inquiry into competitive functioning of conversational agent sector

On 9 January 2026, the Competition Authority of France announced an inquiry into the competitive functioning of the conversational agent sector. The inquiry concerns providers of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) conversational agents and downstream services. The Authority stated that it would soon launch a public consultation as part of the inquiry. Regarding the motivation for starting the inquiry, the authority noted that the market has grown by more than 60% in users in France in 2024 and is increasingly concentrated around a few operators, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Le Chat, Perplexity, and Copilot and noted potential questions surrounding their competitive structuring, business models, and opportunities for other sectors. The inquiry would investigate the business models and monetisation strategies, including advertising integration, and the embedding of conversational agents into existing services. It would also examine the potential leverage and self-referencing effects by dominant firms, partnerships, and the evolution of conversational agents into platform-like interfaces, granting access to third-party services. The inquiry would also focus on agentic commerce, where conversational agents guide or autonomously carry out e-commerce transactions by browsing online shops, making recommendations and facilitating payments, with implications for retailers, logistics providers and payment services. The inquiry would exclude the relationship between conversational agents and search engines. The authority noted that a public consultation would be launched and an opinion would be issued in 2026.