AI Companies Face Lawsuit Over Alleged Agreement to Slow AI Development

A new lawsuit has been filed in the United States against Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google, accusing the companies of illegally agreeing to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development.

The lawsuit was filed on Friday at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It alleges that the companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating efforts to slow AI development, potentially reducing the value and benefits consumers receive from paid AI subscription services.

According to the lawsuit, the alleged coordination took place largely on September 12, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling for industry-wide cooperation to slow AI advancements in favor of stronger safety measures.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis subsequently responded publicly and expressed agreement with Amodei’s proposals.

The plaintiffs argue that an agreement among major AI competitors to develop their technologies more slowly than they otherwise would could have an anticompetitive impact on consumers.

Four named plaintiffs, who are subscribers to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini, filed the case on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to the services.

The plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Nick Rowley, argued that AI safety should not be controlled through private agreements between major technology companies.

Representatives of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI had not immediately responded to requests for comment as of Saturday.

The lawsuit’s allegations have not been proven in court, and the case remains ongoing.

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