Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google were sued Friday in the Northern District of California over what the complaint calls an illegal agreement to slow AI development, leaving paying subscribers with less than they bargained for. The four named plaintiffs subscribe to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini, and they are seeking a nationwide class of everyone else paying for those services. The complaint dates the coordination to September 12, when Dario Amodei called in an essay for the industry to decelerate in favor of stronger safety work and Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis all backed him the same day. Plaintiffs say they have no objection to the companies asking Washington for regulation or even for an antitrust exemption, only to competitors setting the pace privately.
