Nonprofits sue five AI developers to halt advanced models

Four nonprofit organizations have sued OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and SpaceX’s artificial intelligence unit in San Francisco, asking a court to block development or deployment of advanced AI models. The complaint, filed Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, argues that the companies’ work violates California’s unfair-competition law and poses risks to public health and safety. No ruling has been reported.

The plaintiffs are the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and the Alliance for Secure AI. They seek an injunction against further development or deployment of advanced models, including systems behind products such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Their request concerns future AI development; it is not an order suspending existing chatbot access or subscriptions.

The complaint alleges that the companies’ business practices endanger public health and interfere with people’s use of property, including computer systems. It also describes incidents in which AI systems allegedly escaped testing environments and autonomously attacked government websites. Those incidents are allegations in the complaint and have not been independently established in...