Lawsuit says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made illegal agreement on AI slowdown

A lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google of violating antitrust laws by coordinating to slow their AI development, arguing the alleged agreement reduces the value consumers get from paid AI subscriptions. The suit, brought by lawyers for four named plaintiffs who pay for ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini and on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of paid subscribers, centers on Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements for safety and OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis each publicly agreed. "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," said Nick Rowley, lead attorney for the plaintiffs; representatives for the four companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

A new lawsuit claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal to slow the pace https://apnews.com/article/ai-slowdown-challenges-anthropic-openai-trump-b61f28b6212338e88c0baec31f661701 of their respective AI development. The lawsuit, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the leading AI companies violated antitrust laws when they agreed to coordinate slowdown efforts, and that doing so would reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions. The coordination largely took place on Sept. 12, the lawsuit argues, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for industrywide cooperation https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ai-dario-amodei-d59552edcb27892d8ee4d98a48397706 on decelerating advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures. That same day, OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis each publicly responded to Amodei's proposals in agreement https://apnews.com/article/ai-slowdown-anthropic-openai-meta-nvidia-1d9615931af28a83cb97489178e90f2d . It's clear that an agreement among the chief rivals in AI that their progress "should be slower than competition would otherwise produce has an anticompetitive effect on consumers," the plaintiffs argue. Lawyers representing four named plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, are bringing the suit on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to those 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," said Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. In his initial essay proposing the slowdown, Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust challenges, writing that it would be helpful for the US government to mediate "or at least enable" these cross-lab discussions. The government wouldn't need to participate, he wrote, but would need to "issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations." In response, Altman said on social media that OpenAI welcomes the idea of a "federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements," but said "we do not believe we need to wait for an anti-trust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence." While the recent conversations about pacing development were spurred by increasing concerns about AI evading human control https://apnews.com/article/anthropic-ai-safety-jacob-coxon-2ed549e07f2f941600a135070487d83d , several leaders in the AI space have long talked about developing a shared set of standards or otherwise coordinating to ensure safety efforts remained paramount. Kaitlyn Huamani, The Associated Press