A new lawsuit has been filed alleging that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google entered into an illegal deal to slow the pace of their artificial intelligence development.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in the Northern District Court of California, alleges that leading AI companies violated antitrust laws when they agreed to coordinate efforts to slow the pace of development, and that this would reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions, the Associated Press reported.
The suit notes that the coordination mostly took place on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an article urging industry-wide cooperation in slowing the pace of development in favor of enhancing safety measures. On the same day, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceXAI, and Demis Hassabis, co-founder and chairman of Google DeepMind, publicly responded to Amodei's proposals in support of them.
However, the lawsuit also alleges that this coordination began taking shape months before that; She points to a July 2026 statement signed by high-level employees at several leading AI labs, in which they acknowledged that there was “intense competitive pressure to slow down” the pace of development unilaterally. That statement called on the government to support global efforts to slow the development of automated artificial intelligence systems.
The plaintiffs argue that an agreement between major AI competitors — requiring their progress to be “slower than would be achieved by natural competition” — clearly has the effect of reducing competition and harming consumers.
Lawyers representing four named plaintiffs - paying subscribers to GPT Chat, Cloud, Grok, or Gemini - are filing this lawsuit on behalf of a proposed class that includes other subscribers to those services nationwide.
Plaintiffs do not object to individual companies deciding to slow down their progress in the interest of enhancing safety. But they argue in the suit that antitrust laws prevent them from taking this “shortcut” of agreeing to “replace individual liability with collective restrictions.” The lawsuit asserts that the existence of a competitive market allows for taking responsibility and achieving real progress.
“AI will quickly escape human control, and could destroy us all, if we allow the safety of AI and its protocols to be subject to private, self-serving agreements concluded by the most powerful, profitable technology companies in the world,” said Nick Rowley, lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
In his first article in which he suggested slowing the pace of development, Amodei acknowledged the possibility of antitrust challenges and wrote that it would be helpful for the US government to mediate these discussions among AI labs, “or at least make them available.” He explained that the government would not need to participate in it, but would need to “issue a limited exemption for certain types of safety-related discussions.”
Altman responded on social media, saying that “OpenAI welcomes the idea of a federal framework that sets uniform safety requirements,” but added, “We do not believe we need to wait for antitrust relief or legislation to begin working to provide that confidence.”
While recent discussions about slowing the pace of AI development have been driven by growing concerns about it escaping human control, a number of AI industry leaders have long talked about developing a common set of standards, or coordinating efforts in other ways, to ensure safety remains a top priority.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit confirm that they do not oppose artificial intelligence companies requesting Congress, the White House, or any other government agency to establish regulations to regulate artificial intelligence, nor do they oppose companies requesting an exemption from antitrust laws, but achieving this type of cooperation with the federal government may be an arduous task.
President Donald Trump rejected calls to regulate the sector through his social media posts, claiming that any efforts to limit this technology fall within a “conspiracy.” He wondered why the sector leaders called for the imposition of regulations that he said, “if strictly implemented, will lead them to extinction and bankruptcy.” On Saturday, Trump said on social media that he was forming a task force for artificial intelligence and would appoint an “artificial intelligence czar,” but he provided few details.
The Trump administration has explicitly expressed its desire for American artificial intelligence laboratories to outperform their Chinese counterparts and achieve greater progress than them. While a number of Democratic leaders and candidates have called for broad action to regulate artificial intelligence, Republicans have largely taken a position similar to Trump's.
In this regard, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican from Missouri, said during a recent Senate hearing that “there is no world” in which he could agree to grant “the most powerful companies in the history of the world” an exemption from antitrust laws to cooperate among themselves, arguing that this might allow them to collude and stifle competition.
US President Donald Trump wrote in a post on social media on Saturday that he is forming an “artificial intelligence force” to oversee the regulation of this field, according to the Reuters news agency.
Trump wrote on the Truth Social platform: “In no way will we hinder or inhibit the growth of this amazing industry. “We will embrace it, support it and nurture it as it grows. However, we will also monitor any bad practices, and we can do this quite easily through the criminal and civil justice system we already have in place.”
In the face of growing public skepticism about artificial intelligence and dire safety warnings from leaders in the field, Trump said liberals want to "eliminate or destroy artificial intelligence."
He explained that he is in the process of forming a special team for artificial intelligence whose mission is to “monitor disadvantages,” and that he will soon announce the appointment of a government coordinator for artificial intelligence affairs.
Trump's statements about artificial intelligence came despite opinion polls showing widespread opposition among Americans to the establishment of data centers that consume huge amounts of energy and are the main driver of artificial intelligence.
Trump strongly embraces this technology, despite widespread warnings that the pace of development of artificial intelligence is accelerating excessively, and that this technology may soon threaten humans, with repeated incidents of increasingly intelligent software falling out of the control of its designers.
The Republican president considered that the United States could not afford to lose the technological race to China, stressing that the only necessary guarantees were the presence of “a strong and intelligent president (with a high IQ!), which the United States possesses in tremendous abundance!”
In another social media post on Saturday, Trump questioned whether the term “artificial intelligence” was accurate, and presented three alternatives in what he described as an opinion poll, asking people for their opinions.
Trump wrote that the three alternatives are: superior intelligence, superior intelligence, and supreme intelligence.
He added, “This is an opinion poll, and I would be grateful for everyone’s participation in voting!” What is the best name for this ever-growing “revolution?”
American officials said that they would raise the issue of artificial intelligence during talks with China, as the US President prepares to meet his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, next week.
Both Washington and Beijing view developments in artificial intelligence as crucial to their economic and military competitiveness, but they remain at odds over issues including access to advanced microchips, allegations of copying technology, and regulation of the artificial intelligence industry.
