Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee speaks during the hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is pressing more than 20 data broker companies, including Equifax, Oracle and Whitepages, to reveal the types of information they collect on U.S. consumers and how they distribute it, according to letters shared exclusively with CNBC.
In the letters, 10 lawmakers asked the companies for detailed responses on the types of sensitive information they gather, such as health, location and phone data, including apps consumers download to their devices. The companies were also asked what information they collect on minors.
The push comes as the House Energy and Commerce Committee continues its review of data brokers, a key portion of the tech industry that collects and sells heaps of Americans’ digital information.
The letters ask whether the brokers consider any type of data to be off limits for them to buy or sell, what restrictions they put on data they share with third parties and how they verify the accuracy of the data they collect and distribute. Additional questions span from seeking to understand how much money the businesses make from selling data to how many sources they use to get that information.
Last month, the subcommittee on oversight and investigations held a hearing with expert witnesses to examine “the role of data brokers in the digital economy.” The letters indicate the committee remains focused on this slice of the tech industry as it looks to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. It also shows that Congress is focused on a broader swath of companies than just the massive players like Google and Facebook that attract so much scrutiny.
The lawmakers point to a recent proposed settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and online mental health service provider BetterHelp, after the agency alleged the company shared sensitive customer data with third-party websites for advertising.
“American privacy concerns in the data broker industry are not new, and existing laws do not sufficiently protect Americans’ data from misuse,” the letter said, adding that an FTC report in 2014 left wiggle room. In that report, the regulator recommended that Congress force brokers to give consumers greater control over their data, but the “data brokers can easily circumvent existing rules and laws,” the letter said.
Lawmakers who signed the letter include Committee Chair Cathy McMorris, R-Wash., and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., as well as several subcommittee chairs and ranking members: Reps. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., Kathy Castor, D-Fla., Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Bob Latta, R-Ohio, Doris Matsui, D-Calif., Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.
Here’s the full list of data brokers who received the letter::
The Motion Picture Association on Monday urged OpenAI to “take immediate and decisive action” against its new video creation model Sora 2, which is being used to produce content that it says is infringing on copyrighted media.
Following the Sora app’s rollout last week, users have been swarming the platform with AI-generated clips featuring characters from popular shows and brands.
“Since Sora 2’s release, videos that infringe our members’ films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI’s service and across social media,” MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman clarified in a blog post that the company will give rightsholders “more granular control” over how their characters are used.
But Rivkin said that OpenAI “must acknowledge it remains their responsibility – not rightsholders’ – to prevent infringement on the Sora 2 service,” and that “well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.
Concerns erupted immediately after Sora videos were created last week featuring everything from James Bond playing poker with Altman to body cam footage of cartoon character Mario evading the police.
Although OpenAI previously held an opt-out system, which placed the burden on studios to request that characters not appear on Sora, Altman’s follow-up blog post said the platform was changing to an opt-in model, suggesting that Sora would not allow the usage of copyrighted characters without permission.
However, Altman noted that the company may not be able to prevent all IP from being misused.
“There may be some edge cases of generations that get through that shouldn’t, and getting our stack to work well will take some iteration,” Altman wrote.
Copyright concerns have emerged as a major issue during the generative AI boom.
Disney and Universal sued AI image creator Midjourney in June, alleging that the company used and distributed AI-generated characters from their films and disregarded requests to stop. Disney also sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Character.AI in September, warning the company to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization.
Thoma Bravo co-founder Orlando Bravo said that valuations for artificial intelligence companies are “at a bubble,” comparing it to the dotcom era.
But one key difference in the market now, he said, is that large companies with “healthy balance sheets” are financing AI businesses.
Bravo’s private equity firm boasts more than $181 billion in assets under management as of June, and focuses on buying and selling enterprise tech companies, with a significant chunk of its portfolio invested in cybersecurity.
Bravo told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday that investors can’t value a $50 million annual recurring revenue company at $10 billion.
“That company is going to have to produce a billion dollars in free cash flow to double an investor’s money, ultimately,” he said. “Even if the product is right, even if the market’s right, that’s a tall order, managerially.”
Read more CNBC tech news
OpenAI recently finalized a secondary share sale that would value the ChatGPT-maker at $500 billion. The company is projected to make $13 billion in revenue for 2025.
Nvidia recently said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, in part, to help the ChatGPT maker lease its chips and build out supercomputing facilities in the coming years.
Other public companies have soared on AI promises, with Palantir’s market cap climbing to $437 billion, putting it among the 20 most valuable publicly traded companies in the U.S., and AppLovin now worth $213 billion.
Even early-stage valuations are massive in AI, with Thinking Machines Lab notching a $12 billion valuation on a $2 billion seed round.
Despite the inflated numbers, Bravo emphasized that there’s a “big difference” between the dotcom collapse and the current landscape of AI.
“Now you have some really big companies and some big balance sheets and healthy balance sheets financing this activity, which is different than what happened roughly 25 years ago,” he said.
Oracle stock slipped 5% on Tuesday after a report from The Information that raised questions about the company’s plans to buy billions of Nvidia chips to rent as a cloud provider to clients like OpenAI.
Oracle had 14% gross margins on $900 million in sales in its Nvidia cloud business in the three months ending in August, according to the report, which cited internal documents. That’s significantly lower than Oracle’s overall gross margin of around 70%.
The report said that Oracle’s recent transformation into one of the most important cloud and artificial intelligence companies may run into profitability challenges because of how expensive Nvidia chips are and aggressive pricing on its AI chip rentals.
Read more CNBC tech news
In September, Oracle said that its backlog of cloud contracts, which it called remaining performance obligations, had jumped 359% in a year. It forecasted $144 billion in cloud infrastructure revenue in 2030, up from just over $10 billion in 2025.