OpenAI has asked members of Congress for clear guidance on whether coordinating an industry-wide slowdown on frontier AI development would violate US law, people close to the company told WIRED. The question exposes a tension between calls for safety collaboration and the legal risks that could deter major tech companies from participating.
Substantive coordination on safety between AI labs may risk running afoul of antitrust law, the people said. That legal uncertainty poses a significant obstacle to bringing major tech giants on board with any voluntary pause effort.
The antitrust question
Last weekend, OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki published a blog post arguing that the best path forward for the AI research world includes "coordinating to slow down future development," which he said will be key to ensuring self-improving AI systems are safe. In the short term, he expects "voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established."
Some legal scholars see a conflict. 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 may amount to companies restricting output, potentially violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. "It would depend entirely on the precise details of any agreement," Felstead wrote. "But even if most safety collaborations would ultimately survive antitrust scrutiny, legal uncertainty can act as a powerful deterrent."
OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.
Congressional response
There are early signs that Congress is listening. 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 antitrust violations. 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, which endorsed the bill, said it would create legal channels for AI labs to work together on safety and security incidents. Knapp added that Congress has a "growing appetite to get something done" on AI safety but said enacting anything into law may have to wait until after the upcoming midterm elections.
Skepticism about the legal argument
While some AI executives may have genuine concerns about antitrust, another camp of AI leaders argues those worries serve as convenient cover. The real reasons AI developers may be wary about collaborating go beyond potential legal liabilities.
AI is a massive business, and these companies compete fiercely to capture a slice of the nascent market for frontier models. Some executives share the Trump administration's view that staying ahead of China in AI is crucial for national security. Different AI developers also hold vastly different opinions about the best way to build safe artificial intelligence, which makes collaboration on safety standards difficult.
"First step is for industry leaders OpenAI and Anthropic to stop feuding and work on a pacing proposal together," John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder who is now chief scientist at the rival AI lab Thinking Machines, wrote in a post on X earlier this week. "They'll cite antitrust, but that's fake-antitrust prohibits certain agreements, but not from jointly developing a proposal."
Rising alarm over AI safety
Long-simmering fears about the race among AI companies to build and release ever more powerful models erupted into the national spotlight this summer. This week, former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon issued a stark public warning that AI developers were putting humanity at risk. In recent months, a number of security incidents, including OpenAI's agents hacking Hugging Face, highlighted how the industry's safeguards have failed to keep pace with the rising capabilities of models. The succession of events has led many lawmakers to make urgent calls for AI regulation.
Why this matters for legal professionals
The antitrust ambiguity surrounding AI safety coordination creates a live case study in how competition law intersects with emerging technology governance. If Congress passes the proposed safe harbor legislation, it would establish a new precedent for industry cooperation on security without triggering Sherman Act scrutiny. For in-house counsel at AI companies, the current uncertainty means any joint safety initiative requires careful antitrust analysis, particularly around agreements that could be construed as output restrictions. The debate also signals a broader shift: lawmakers are increasingly willing to carve out legal exceptions for AI safety work, a development that could reshape the regulatory landscape for years.
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