OpenAI seeks legal guidance on coordinated AI “slowdowns” as antitrust concerns mount

OpenAI has asked members of Congress in recent weeks for guidance on whether industry-wide coordination to slow frontier AI development would be legal, according to people close to the company. The effort faces potential antitrust risk if coordination on safety amounts to agreement on restricting output.

OpenAI pushes for voluntary pacing

Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s chief scientist, argued last weekend that the AI research community should include “coordinating to slow down future development” to improve safety for self-improving systems. He expects “voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established.”

Scholars warn coordination could trigger antitrust scrutiny

Legal experts cited by the report say coordinated pauses could conflict with US antitrust laws. Nicholas Felstead, assistant director of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and a former AI policy fellow at the Center for Law & AI Risk, argued in a March article that a coordinated pause could be treated as companies restricting output under the Sherman Antitrust Act. He said the outcome depends “entirely on the precise details of any agreement,” and that legal uncertainty can deter even safety-focused collaboration.

Congress considers a bill to create an antitrust safe harbor

There are early signs of congressional engagement. In July, a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers introduced the “Collaboration on Adversarial Threats and Security Risks Act,” which would explicitly permit AI labs to coordinate on security and safety work without risking violations of antitrust statutes. The House version was referred to the Judiciary Committee but has yet to be taken up.

Caleb Knapp, director of government affairs at the nonprofit AI Policy Network, said the bill would create legal channels for AI labs to work together on safety and security incidents. He added that passage could wait until after the upcoming midterm elections.

Industry divisions extend beyond legal risk

The report also points to skepticism inside the AI leadership community about whether antitrust concerns are the main barrier to collaboration. Some executives argue the legal worries are a convenient cover for reluctance rooted in competition, national security priorities, and disagreements over how to build safe AI. John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder now chief scientist at the rival lab Thinking Machines, wrote on X earlier this week that OpenAI and Anthropic should stop feuding and work on a pacing proposal together, arguing antitrust would not bar jointly developing such a proposal.

Why this matters

The push for coordinated pacing is colliding with US antitrust law and uncertainty about what forms of collaboration are permissible. If Congress does not clarify the legal boundaries, companies may face deterrence that slows cooperative safety efforts even as lawmakers respond to rising incidents and calls for regulation.