OpenAI has reached out to U.S. Congress members for clarity on whether a coordinated slowdown in the development of advanced AI models would violate antitrust laws. This request was reported by WIRED, citing sources close to the company.

The crux of the matter is that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and other industry players are competitors. If they agree to collectively slow down their development pace, it could potentially be viewed as a joint restriction on production.

Nicholas Felstead, deputy director of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and former researcher at the Center for Law & AI Risk, pointed out that such coordination might conflict with the Sherman Act. However, the legal assessment would depend on the specific terms of any agreement.

"Even if most forms of cooperation in the security domain ultimately pass antitrust scrutiny, the legal uncertainty itself can be a powerful deterrent," Felstead noted.

Not all industry representatives agree that this argument is sufficient. John Schulman, co-founder of OpenAI and chief scientist at Thinking Machines, has urged OpenAI and Anthropic to collaborate on a proposal for AI development timelines. He believes that while antitrust laws prohibit certain agreements between competitors, they do not hinder the joint preparation of such a mechanism.

AI Companies' Exception

On July 23, bipartisan legislators introduced the Collaboration on Adversarial Threats and Security Risks Act. The initiative was put forth by Senators Adam Schiff and Jim Banks, along with Representatives Bob Latta and George Whitesides.

This bill proposes a limited exemption from antitrust regulations for collaborative efforts to mitigate AI risks. Developers would be allowed to share threat information and coordinate measures to address them, including delaying or restricting the deployment of high-risk models.

In cases of coordinated limitations, companies must notify the head of the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice in advance and specify the particular risks and the scope of the proposed actions. This exemption does not permit price-fixing, market division, boycotts, or other anti-competitive practices.

Both versions of the initiative remain in the legal committees of Congress. The H.R. 9914 has been sent to the House of Representatives' legal committee, while S. 5105 has been referred to the Senate. No further actions have been recorded since the submission on July 23.

OpenAI's Previous Slowdown

On September 6, OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki stated that no laboratory has yet solved the alignment and monitoring issues sufficiently well to continue scaling at maximum speed for extended periods.

I wrote about the state of AI, why I’m concerned about the next few years, and the choices we need to make to keep the future in humanity’s hands.

An Alien Mind: https://t.co/FeIfWNe0UE

— Jakub Pachocki (@merettm) September 6, 2026

"I expect and hope that voluntary slowdowns will become standard practice until common safety standards are established," he remarked.

Pachocki believes that international coordination for the further development of AI should be a priority for governments.

Previously, OpenAI had temporarily slowed the scaling of new systems and paused reinforcement training of its latest models for two weeks. This decision followed an incident involving Hugging Face and an early assessment of Astra's cyber capabilities.

Researchers later noted a decline in the observability of Astra. Pachocki acknowledged the monitoring capabilities at that time as "fragile."

It is worth noting that in September, a U.S. Senate subcommittee began investigating OpenAI's actions following the Hugging Face incident, with lawmakers requesting documents regarding the company's response to unforeseen behaviors of its AI agents.

Additionally, there have been proposals in the U.S. to permanently ban the development of artificial superintelligence and to temporarily halt the creation of advanced AI systems until federal safety standards are established.