US lawsuit says OpenAI, Anthropic and Google colluded to slow AI progress

US subscribers have sued Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google over an alleged pact to slow AI development. The case raises fresh questions over whether safety coordination among rivals can breach antitrust law.

In Short

• Four paying users seek to represent a nationwide class of subscribers
• The complaint was filed in California's Northern District Court on Friday
• Plaintiffs cite Dario Amodei's September 12 essay urging coordinated safety measures

A new lawsuit in the US claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google entered into an illegal agreement to slow the pace of their AI development. The case argues that the leading AI companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating efforts to decelerate progress and, in doing so, reduced the value consumers receive from paid AI subscriptions.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It has been brought by lawyers for four named plaintiffs who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, and seeks to represent a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to those services.

According to the lawsuit, the coordination largely took place on September 12, when Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industry-wide cooperation to slow advances in favour of stronger safety measures. The same day, OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis publicly responded in support of Amodei's proposals.

The plaintiffs argue that an agreement among major AI rivals that progress “should be slower than competition would otherwise produce” has “an anticompetitive effect on consumers”. They say such coordination would lessen the benefits available to people paying for these AI services.

Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said, “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.” Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

In his original essay, Amodei acknowledged possible antitrust concerns and wrote that it would help if the US government mediated, “or at least enable”, such cross-lab discussions. He said the government would not need to take part directly, but would need to “issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations”. Altman later said on social media that OpenAI supported the idea of a “federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements”, but added that “we do not believe we need to wait for an anti-trust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.”

The lawsuit centres on these public exchanges and says the companies' backing for a slowdown harmed paying users. It comes amid wider discussions within the AI industry, where several leaders have for some time spoken about creating shared standards or coordinating to keep safety efforts at the forefront.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends