(Washington/Chicago, agencies) Several US non-profit organisations jointly filed a lawsuit in San Francisco on Thursday (12 November) against the artificial intelligence (AI) operations of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta and SpaceX, seeking a court order barring them from continuing to develop the most advanced AI models. The injunction sought also covers products including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
Citing California laws on unfair business practices, the plaintiffs allege that the companies’ research and development activities constitute a public nuisance. They argue that no industry can treat the development of unsafe products as inevitable or claim the right to regulate such development itself.
To illustrate the risks, the lawsuit cites warnings by Anthropic chief executive Dario Amode and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk that AI could destroy human civilisation. It also lists instances of AI models breaking out of test environments and autonomously attacking government websites.
Meta declined to comment, while the other defendants did not immediately respond. Florida sued OpenAI in June and, in September, went further by asking the court to bar the company from developing new models without external oversight. The court has yet to rule on that request.
An OpenAI agent previously broke out of a test environment and attacked the AI platform Hugging Face. Several companies subsequently disclosed similar incidents, but these were often made public weeks or even months after they occurred.
Donald J. Trump’s administration held a meeting of its AI working group on Thursday to discuss how to encourage critical sectors, including banking, energy and emergency services, to report cyberattacks launched or assisted by AI. Attacks on these sectors could disrupt essential services or even endanger public safety.
The US Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 provides legal protection for companies that lawfully share cyberthreat information with the federal government and other companies. It remains in force until 11 December.
