A civil lawsuit filed in federal court on Friday alleges that leading artificial intelligence firms, including Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Alphabet, engaged in collusive behavior by jointly advocating for a coordinated slowdown in AI development. The complaint asserts that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who earlier this month publicly called for “industry-wide coordination” to manage the pace of frontier AI advancements, received backing from SpaceXAI head Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis. Under U.S. antitrust statutes, such actions are characterized as an unlawful commercial pact among competitors.
Nick Rowley, one of the attorneys representing the four plaintiffs in the case filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, stated that the lawsuit aims to prevent the world’s most powerful for-profit tech companies from reaching "self-serving, backroom deals" that could cause AI to "rapidly slip beyond human control." In a statement, Rowley emphasized: "When confronted with existential threats like nuclear war, and now the greatest risk humanity has ever faced, people deserve unbreachable safeguards. Legal standards should be set by governments in a transparent, lawful manner, and they must be accountable to the public."
One of the plaintiffs, Cheyenne Hunt, is a lawyer who previously brought to light allegations of sexual misconduct against former California Assemblyman Eric Swalwell and former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner earlier this year. Joining her as plaintiffs are Florida attorneys Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas, along with California resident Christine Bullock. The plaintiffs have indicated their intention to expand the case into a class action, representing all individuals impacted by the companies' decisions to decelerate development.
This legal challenge comes amid serious warnings from multiple current and former AI researchers who have cautioned that continued AI progress without additional safeguards poses a fundamental threat to human survival. In this context, industry leaders have expressed support for slowing down AI research. OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceXAI, and Alphabet have not yet responded to requests for comment.