Vendor lock-in finds a new home in AI, and a contract clause won’t fix it
The General Services Administration spent a number of months this year drafting a new clause to use in its contracts for the purchasing of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The original draft started too broadly, with the June version seemingly preventing ordinary services contractors from using AI tools in their work supporting the government without flowing down implausible contract clauses to their AI suppliers. No casual user with a monthly subscription can get a behemoth like OpenAI or Anthropic to change its standard usage policies. Even the Department of War has had difficulty persuading Anthropic to modify its restrictions on how AI may be deployed.
Fortunately, the newly implemented GSA clause solved the ordinary contractor usage problem by making it not applicable for them.
Conversely, the flow-down burden on the suppliers of AI puts a spotlight on the problem of flow-downs in general and on vendor locking policies specifically. As a legal...
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