Google Accused of Slowing Down AI Development in Antitrust Lawsuit
A lawsuit has been filed against Google and its parent company Alphabet in connection with an alleged slowdown of artificial intelligence (AI) development. The complaint, which was lodged on September 18th, accuses four AI labs, including Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google, of agreeing to slow the pace of AI improvement.
The plaintiffs, who are paid subscribers to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and Gemini, claim that this agreement restricts output and quality, effectively overcharging them. They seek treble damages and an injunction to prevent any horizontal agreements on limits to training compute or capability checkpoints.
According to the complaint, Google took part in a working group from July and proposed the creation of a standards body modeled after FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. However, the plaintiffs argue that this is not sufficient to exempt the agreement from antitrust laws.
The case has been assigned to Magistrate Judge Nathanael M. Cousins, and summonses were issued on September 21st. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Nick Rowley, framed the case as a safety argument as much as an antitrust one, stating that AI could spin out of human control if left to be controlled by private agreements.
None of the defendants have commented on the lawsuit, but their statements before the filing are being used as evidence. Google's words are described as the most hedged among the four companies, while OpenAI's policy chief Chris Lehane confirmed that they had worked with Anthropic and Google DeepMind for weeks.
The market has not yet priced any risk from the case, with Alphabet's stock closing at $354.97 on September 21st, up 4.9% since the last close before the filing.