Trump proposes ‘AI czar’, task force as top AI firms face slowdown lawsuit
Trump says his administration will support AI growth as four major companies face allegations of coordinating to slow AI development amid growing regulatory concerns
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he intends to appoint an artificial intelligence adviser, or “AI czar”, and create an “AI force”, as his administration seeks to support the growth of the AI industry amid growing debate over regulation and competition in the sector.
Trump made the announcement as four major AI companies face a lawsuit alleging they illegally agreed to slow the pace of AI development. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, names Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google as defendants and argues that the alleged coordination could hurt competition and consumers.
Trump said his administration would support the expansion of the AI industry while relying on existing criminal and civil justice systems to address potential wrongdoing.
Announcement ahead of Xi meeting
“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” Trump wrote. “Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!”
The announcement came ahead of Trump’s scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, as Washington and Beijing compete for a leading position in artificial intelligence.
In another Truth Social post, the US President criticised those opposing AI and data centres, saying he would not allow the “destruction” of the industry that liberals want.
“I, as President of the United States, will not stand by and let this happen,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Lawsuit filed against top AI firms
Against this backdrop, a new lawsuit claims Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal to slow the pace of their respective AI development.
Filed Friday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit alleges that the leading AI companies violated antitrust laws by agreeing to coordinate efforts to slow development. It also argues that such coordination would reduce the value consumers get from paid AI subscriptions.
The coordination largely took place on September 12, the lawsuit argues, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favour of enhanced safety measures. That same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk and Google DeepMind's co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis each publicly responded to Amodei's proposals in agreement.
It's clear that an agreement among the chief rivals in AI that their progress “should be slower than competition would otherwise produce has an anti-competitive effect on consumers,” the plaintiffs argue.
Lawyers representing four named plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, are bringing the suit on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to those services.
“AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol ... to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world's most powerful for profit' technology companies,” said Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
Representatives for Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
(With agency inputs)