Lawsuit says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made illegal agreement on AI slowdown

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A new lawsuit claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal to slow the pace of their respective AI development.

The lawsuit, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that the leading AI companies violated antitrust laws when they agreed to coordinate slowdown efforts, and that doing so would reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions.

The coordination largely took place on Sept. 12, the lawsuit argues, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures. That same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind’s co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis each publicly responded to Amodei’s proposals in agreement.

But the lawsuit also alleges that the coordination began to take shape months earlier. It points to a statement from July 2026 that high-ranking employees from several of the leading AI labs signed that acknowledged the “intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow” development. That statement called on the government to support a global effort to slow automated AI development.

It is clear that an agreement among the chief rivals in AI that their progress “should be slower than competition would otherwise produce has an anticompetitive effect on consumers,” the plaintiffs argue.

Lawyers representing four named plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, are bringing the lawsuit on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to those services.

The plaintiffs don’t object to the companies individually deciding to slow their own progress in favor of safety. They instead argue in the complaint that antitrust laws forbid them from taking the “shortcut” of agreeing to “substitute collective restraint for individual accountability.” A competitive market allows for responsibility and genuine progress, the lawsuit argues.

“AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol … to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies,” said Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.

Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.

In his initial essay proposing the slowdown, Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust challenges, writing that it would be helpful for the U.S. government to mediate “or at least enable” these cross-lab discussions. The government wouldn’t need to participate, he wrote, but it would need to “issue a narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations.”

In response, Altman said on social media that OpenAI welcomes the idea of a “federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements,” but said “we do not believe we need to wait for an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.”

While the recent conversations about pacing development were spurred by increasing concerns about AI evading human control, several leaders in the AI space have long talked about developing a shared set of standards or otherwise coordinating to ensure safety efforts remain paramount.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit contend they are not against the AI companies asking Congress, the White House or any other agency to develop AI regulation, nor are they against the companies asking for an antitrust exemption.

But achieving that kind of collaboration with the federal government could be an uphill battle.

President Donald Trump rejected the calls for regulation on social media. He has claimed that any efforts to limit the technology are part of a “conspiracy.” He called into question why the industry leaders would be calling for regulation that, he says, “if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy.” Trump said Saturday on social media that he is forming an AI task force and will appoint an “AI czar,” but he provided scant detail.

The Trump administration has been vocal about wanting American AI labs to outpace and excel against Chinese competition. While several Democratic leaders and candidates have called for sweeping action on AI regulation, Republicans have largely mirrored Trump’s position.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, said in a recent Senate hearing that “there is no world” in which he would agree to give “the most powerful companies in the history of the world” an exemption from antitrust laws to collaborate, arguing that they could collude together and stifle competition.

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一项新的诉讼称，Anthropic、OpenAI、SpaceXAI 和谷歌达成了一项非法协议，以减缓各自人工智能开发的速度。

该诉讼于周五在美国加州北区地方法院提起，诉讼称，领先的人工智能公司在同意协调减缓开发速度时违反了反垄断法，这样做会降低消费者从付费人工智能订阅中获得的价值。

诉讼文件指出，协调工作主要发生在9月12日，当时Anthropic首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪发表了一篇文章，呼吁全行业合作，放缓技术进步速度，转而加强安全措施。同一天，OpenAI首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼、SpaceXAI首席执行官埃隆·马斯克和谷歌DeepMind联合创始人兼董事长德米斯·哈萨比斯都公开回应了阿莫迪的提议，表示赞同。

但诉讼还指出，这种协调早在数月前就开始酝酿。诉讼援引了一份2026年7月的声明，该声明由几家领先的人工智能实验室的高管签署，承认存在“巨大的竞争压力，不容单方面放缓”人工智能的发展。该声明呼吁各国政府支持一项旨在减缓人工智能自动化发展速度的全球性行动。

原告方认为，人工智能领域的主要竞争对手达成协议，规定他们的发展速度“应该比竞争本身带来的速度更慢”，这显然会对消费者产生反竞争影响。

代表四名付费订阅 ChatGPT、Claude、Grok 或 Gemini 的原告的律师，代表拟议中的全国范围内其他付费订阅用户提起诉讼。

原告并不反对各公司单独决定为了安全而放慢自身研发进度。相反，他们在诉状中辩称，反垄断法禁止他们走“捷径”，即同意“以集体约束取代个体责任”。诉讼认为，竞争性市场才能带来责任和真正的进步。

“如果我们允许人工智能的安全性和协议……被世界上最强大的‘营利性’科技公司之间私下自利的协议所控制，人工智能将很快失控，并可能毁灭我们所有人，”原告首席律师尼克·罗利说道。

周六，Anthropic、OpenAI、Google 和 SpaceXAI 的代表均未立即回应置评请求。

阿莫迪在其最初提出放缓研发进程的文章中承认了潜在的反垄断挑战，并写道，美国政府如果能够调解“或至少促成”这些跨实验室的讨论，将会有所帮助。他写道，政府无需参与，但需要“针对某些类型的安全对话发布一项范围有限的豁免”。

对此，奥特曼在社交媒体上表示，OpenAI 欢迎“制定统一安全要求的联邦框架”的想法，但表示“我们认为无需等待反垄断豁免或立法即可开始提供这种信心的工作”。

尽管最近关于控制人工智能发展速度的讨论是由人们越来越担心人工智能会逃避人类控制而引发的，但人工智能领域的几位领导者长期以来一直在谈论制定一套共同的标准或进行其他协调，以确保安全工作始终是重中之重。

诉讼中的原告辩称，他们并不反对人工智能公司要求国会、白宫或任何其他机构制定人工智能法规，也不反对这些公司要求获得反垄断豁免。

但要与联邦政府达成这种合作，可能是一场艰苦的战斗。

唐纳德·特朗普总统拒绝了对社交媒体进行监管的呼吁。他声称，任何限制这项技术的努力都是“阴谋”的一部分。他质疑，既然他认为“如果严格执行，将会把行业领袖们逼入绝境并导致他们破产”，那么他们为何还要呼吁监管呢？特朗普周六在社交媒体上表示，他将组建一个人工智能工作组，并任命一位“人工智能沙皇”，但他并未提供太多细节。

特朗普政府一直公开表示，希望美国的人工智能实验室能够超越中国，在竞争中脱颖而出。虽然一些民主党领导人和候选人呼吁对人工智能进行全面监管，但共和党人的立场基本上与特朗普一致。

来自密苏里州的共和党参议员乔什·霍利在最近的一次参议院听证会上表示，“没有任何理由”他会同意给予“世界历史上最强大的公司”反垄断法豁免权，允许它们进行合作。他认为，这些公司可能会串通起来，扼杀竞争。