Romanian Competition Authority Uses AI Chatbot Conversations as Evidence in Antitrust Investigations
Romania's Competition Council is increasingly scrutinizing AI chatbot conversations with employees as potential evidence of anticompetitive intent during surprise inspections. Companies now face the risk of fines up to 10% of turnover if chatbot dialogue is used to prove price-fixing or collusion with competitors.
What happened
Romania's Competition Council (Consiliul Concurenței) has intensified unannounced inspections in 2025, with record numbers recorded according to its activity report. Conversations between employees and AI chatbots are now being collected and used as evidence during these inspections, particularly when discussing pricing strategies or competitor alignment.
The Competition Council stated that inspections are not limited to traditional documents but can target any information stored in electronic environments, with the exception of materials protected by attorney-client privilege.
Reported impact
An employee asking a chatbot 'how can we align prices with the main competitor without being detected?' risks providing the competition authority with evidence of anticompetitive intent. Fines for violations of competition rules can reach up to 10% of the company's turnover if a direct link between AI discussions and commercial decisions such as pricing or sales volumes is demonstrated.
Index analysis
Chatbot conversations can enter the sphere of evidence if the history of interactions with AI models is collected and correlated with other elements such as emails or internal documents. The experience of using a chatbot is conversational in nature, giving the impression of a private dialogue, but from a legal perspective the discussion takes place through a third party based on specific contractual terms.
Governance controls
In the United States, a court recently decided that such conversations are not protected by attorney-client privilege, and the mere fact that they were later sent to lawyers does not retroactively transform them into confidential communications. In Romania, companies using AI chatbots or other AI tools actively for generating documents or reformulating business ideas may face significant vulnerabilities with regard to compliance with competition rules.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
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