US lawsuit accuses AI firms of colluding to slow development

A lawsuit filed in the US accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of colluding to slow down artificial intelligence development, in violation of antitrust laws. The case was filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Four paying subscribers of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini are the named plaintiffs, seeking to represent other paying customers nationwide. They argue that competitors cannot decide among themselves that competition poses an excessive risk, and that such coordination would reduce the value of their paid subscriptions. The lawsuit cites a September 12 essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who advocated for industry cooperation to slow advances and proposed a three-point plan to control development pace. The companies have not yet responded to requests for comment, though OpenAI's Sam Altman stated support for uniform federal safety rules without needing an antitrust exemption.