A class-action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on September 18, 2024. The case, Buist v. Anthropic PBC (No. 3:26-cv-10693), names Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google as defendants. The plaintiffs, including Cheyenne Hunt and Charles Buist, allege that these companies illegally coordinated to limit the pace of AI development.
The legal action follows a September 12 article by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who advocated for industry-wide coordination to pace AI progress and allow time for safety evaluations. His proposal included third-party assessments and international cooperation. Executives from OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google DeepMind publicly expressed support for these ideas.
Plaintiffs argue that this public alignment constitutes an agreement to restrict competition, violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. They claim that slowing down product iterations harms consumers by providing slower updates at the same price. The lawsuit seeks class-action status, an injunction against the alleged coordination, and a court ruling declaring the actions illegal.
Attorney Nick Rowley, representing the plaintiffs, stated that the case aims to prevent private agreements between tech companies from dictating the trajectory of AI. The legal team intends to expand the case to represent other consumers who claim to be affected by the companies' decisions to slow down their development cycles.
