Lawsuit claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google violated antitrust laws when they coordinated AI slowdown, reducing value of subscriptions
A new lawsuit claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal to slow the pace of their respective AI development.
TL;DR
- A lawsuit filed in California claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google violated antitrust laws.
- The companies are accused of illegally coordinating to slow down their AI development pace.
- Plaintiffs argue this coordination reduces the value consumers receive from paid AI subscriptions.
- The alleged agreement occurred on September 12th, following an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging industry-wide cooperation on slowing advancements for safety.
- CEOs of OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google DeepMind publicly agreed with Amodei's proposals.
- Lawyers for paid subscribers to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini are bringing the suit.
- The plaintiffs are not against companies seeking government regulation or antitrust exemptions but object to private, self-serving agreements.
- President Trump has spoken against AI regulation, calling it a conspiracy, and is forming an AI task force.
- Some Republicans, like Sen. Josh Hawley, have expressed opposition to granting AI companies antitrust exemptions for collaboration.