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

The Korea Times reports on a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google conspired to slow down their respective AI development efforts. The lawsuit claims that the companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating to implement slower advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures, which could potentially reduce the value consumers receive from paid AI subscriptions.

The lawsuit specifically highlights the agreement reached on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for industry-wide cooperation on decelerating advancements and enhanced safety, followed by similar statements from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind's co-founder and chair, Demis Hassabis.

However, the lawsuit suggests that the coordination may have started earlier, citing a July 2026 statement from high-ranking employees of several leading AI labs acknowledging the intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally accelerate AI development.

Brief written by urgent.news from The Korea Times's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.