Lawsuit alleges AI firms colluded on slowdown
The gist
Four paid AI users sued Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google over an alleged slowdown agreement.
The case tests whether safety coordination among rivals counts as illegal collusion.
How it unfolded
- Jul 2026A statement signed by senior employees of several leading AI labs acknowledged 'intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow' development and called on governments to support a global effort to slow automated AI development.
- Sep 12, 2026Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industry-wide cooperation to decelerate AI advancements for safety; the same day OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis each issued public responses supporting the proposal.
- Sep 18, 2026A class action was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by four named subscribers to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini, seeking to represent a nationwide class of paid AI-service users and accusing Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google of coordinating a slowdown in violation of US antitrust law.