AI Firms Sued for Alleged Antitrust Pact to Slow Progress
A lawsuit filed Friday in California federal court accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of illegally agreeing to slow AI progress, allegedly reducing the value of paid subscriptions for consumers. The plaintiffs, paying subscribers to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini, claim the companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating efforts on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industry-wide cooperation on safety measures. OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis publicly agreed with the proposal that day. Lead attorney Nick Rowley stated AI could escape human control if governed by "selfish private agreements" between powerful tech firms. The companies did not immediately respond to comment requests, though Amodei had suggested the US government could grant a limited antitrust waiver for safety discussions.