US lawsuit claims AI firms conspired to slow development

A new US lawsuit alleges Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal agreement to slow AI development, violating antitrust laws and reducing value for paying subscribers. The case was filed Friday in California federal court. The lawsuit claims coordination began September 12 when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an article urging industry cooperation to slow AI progress for safety reasons, and OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis publicly agreed that day. Four paying subscribers of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini filed the suit on behalf of a proposed national class of users. The plaintiffs' lawyer Nick Rowley said AI could escape human control if safety protocols are governed by private agreements serving tech companies' interests. The companies did not respond to comment requests Saturday. Amodei had acknowledged antitrust concerns and suggested government mediation or limited exemptions, while Altman supported federal safety standards but said no antitrust waiver was needed. President Donald Trump has rejected AI regulation calls, calling them conspiracy, and announced Saturday he would form an AI task force with a czar, favoring US labs outpacing Chinese competition