AI Companies Accused of Illegal Agreement to Slow Development

A lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that artificial intelligence companies Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google engaged in an illegal agreement to slow the pace of their AI development. The suit contends that these leading firms violated antitrust laws by coordinating efforts to decelerate advancements, thereby reducing the value consumers receive for paid AI subscriptions.

The alleged coordination reportedly centered around September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay advocating for industrywide cooperation on decelerating AI advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures. On the same day, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of SpaceXAI, and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind publicly responded in agreement with Amodei's proposals.

Plaintiffs argue that an agreement among these major AI rivals to reduce the pace of their progress, compared to what competition would otherwise produce, has an anticompetitive effect on consumers. The lawsuit has been brought by lawyers representing four named plaintiffs who subscribe to AI services such as ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini, on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to these services.

“AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol ... to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies,” stated Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

In his initial essay, Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust challenges, suggesting that U.S. government mediation or a waiver for certain safety conversations could be beneficial. Altman, in response on social media, expressed openness to a federal framework for consistent safety requirements but stated that immediate action on safety confidence was possible without antitrust exemptions or new legislation.

While recent discussions about the pacing of AI development were prompted by growing concerns over AI evading human control, leaders in the AI sector have long discussed the development of shared standards and coordination to prioritize safety efforts.