Rohan Paul

A new class action lawsuit just filed, suing 4 AI frontier labs over the alleged "AI slowdown" pact. Filed in California federal court, it says coordinated limits on AI development violate Section 1 of the Sherman Act. The complaint traces the alleged agreement to September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged industrywide coordination to limit unchecked AI progress. And then executives at 3 rival frontier companies publicly supported parts of that proposal the same day, which plaintiffs characterize as acceptance of a common restraint. Their argument treats slower capability growth as reduced output because paid subscribers expect continuing improvements in reasoning, coding, agents, context windows and other features. The plaintiffs say a company slowing independently risks losing customers, revenue, talent and technological leadership, while collective restraint could remove that competitive penalty. They seek to represent a nationwide class of people paying for 4 major AI assistants and are requesting an injunction plus treble damages. The filing also stresses that plaintiffs are not challenging unilateral safety testing, outside evaluations, environmental safeguards or government regulation. Ofcourse, the lawsuit remains an allegation, and public statements supporting similar safety goals do not by themselves establish that competitors formed an unlawful agreement.