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

September 19, 2026 / 1:49 PM EDT / CBS/AP

A new lawsuit claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal to slow the pace of their respective AI development.

The lawsuit, which was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues the leading AI companies violated antitrust laws when they agreed to coordinate slowdown efforts, and that doing so would reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions.

The coordination largely took place on Sept. 12, the lawsuit argues, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures.

Amodei warned that swarms of rogue AI agents could take over the internet in as little as six months. He said AI companies should move forward more cautiously and slowly and with the development of the technology. Amodei then suggested a three-point plan in a blog post, which he said had the goal of "pacing the frontier."

"I don't think I fully just appreciated what it would actually be like when the progress was as fast as it was," the CEO told CBS senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/