Lawsuit accuses AI giants of illegal slowdown pact

A new lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal agreement to slow AI development, violating antitrust laws and reducing value for paid subscribers. The plaintiffs, four paid subscribers to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, argue the coordination began Sept. 12 when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged industrywide slowdowns for safety, with OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis publicly agreeing. The suit seeks class-action status for all affected subscribers. Lead attorney Nick Rowley said the agreements could allow AI to "spin out of human control," while Amodei had acknowledged potential antitrust issues, suggesting government mediation or a waiver for safety talks. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.