Lawsuit accuses OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and SpaceXAI of illegal AI 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 illegally agreed to slow their AI development, violating antitrust laws and reducing value for paid subscribers. The suit claims 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. Four named plaintiffs, representing a nationwide class of paid ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini subscribers, argue the rivals' pact has an anticompetitive effect on consumers. Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust issues in his essay, suggesting the U.S. government mediate or issue a narrow waiver for safety conversations. Altman responded that a federal framework would be welcome but said an antitrust exemption isn't necessary to begin safety work. Company representatives didn't immediately respond to comment requests Saturday.