AI Giants Sued for Alleged Illegal Pact to Slow Development

A new lawsuit accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of an illegal agreement to slow their respective artificial intelligence developments. The complaint alleges antitrust violations that reduce the perceived value of paid AI subscriptions. Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit claims these major AI companies coordinated efforts to slow progress, harming consumers who pay for services like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini. It cites a September 12 essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling for industry-wide cooperation on safety measures, which was publicly endorsed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis. The plaintiffs, represented by lead attorney Nick Rowley, seek class-action status for other paying subscribers. Amodei had previously suggested the U.S. government could facilitate such discussions, possibly via a limited antitrust exemption, while Altman favored federal safety standards but said waiting wasn’t necessary. The lawsuit follows longstanding industry concerns about AI potentially escaping human control, with leaders having discussed common safety norms for years.