OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind Collaborate on AI Safety, OpenAI Policy Chief Says

The disclosure comes after several AI industry leaders warned about the pace of frontier model development. On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on his personal blog calling for the AI industry to cooperate to slow the rapid rate of frontier AI progress to avoid what he called “catastrophic risks.” Amodei’s call won support from leaders of major rivals, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Elon Musk of SpaceXAI Corp. and Google’s Demis Hassabis. Altman said OpenAI is willing to join Anthropic’s initiative to embed third-party evaluators within its development teams to monitor AI safety.

Lehane told reporters at a media briefing that OpenAI has been working with Anthropic and Google on AI safety initiatives for several weeks. He did not elaborate on the nature of the work. Altman and others have raised concerns that the companies could risk violating U.S. antitrust laws if their collaboration is seen as harmful to competitors.

Amodei wrote in his essay that the U.S. government should consider giving the companies a waiver to allow safety cooperation without breaching antitrust laws. Lehane said he thinks such a move is unnecessary. Some legal experts have warned that any coordination on safety by AI leaders could be construed as “output restriction,” which would mean a violation of antitrust laws under the Sherman Act. Indiana Senator Jim Banks and California Senator Adam Schiff previously proposed a “Collaboration on Adversarial Threats and Security Risks Act” to let AI labs act on safety even if those actions conflict with antitrust law.

Any effort to secure a waiver is likely to face opposition. In a blog post responding to Amodei’s essay, Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez said the safety calls look like an effort by top AI labs to disguise an anti-competitive scheme that would preserve their lead in frontier model development. He said it would result in “market-dominant” labs being allowed to “define the rules and safety standards” for the rest of the industry. “Once again using fear under the pretext of protecting the public, these oligopolies are now requesting to bend competition rules and be permitted to dictate the terms for everyone else,” Gomez said. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing, a cartel by another name.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed back against AI safety concerns, dismissing them as a hoax and rejecting calls for tighter regulation. In a post on Truth Social, Trump rejected Amodei’s call, arguing that any slowdown would enable China to overtake the U.S. in the AI race. His key AI advisor David Sacks has said fears that AI could present an existential threat are overblown.

Lehane’s comments came during a media briefing in Washington, where he was due to meet lawmakers. OpenAI is reportedly supporting two bipartisan bills affecting the AI industry. The first is the FRONTIER Act, which calls for a federal framework for AI safety and mandates that AI labs submit their new models for audits by independent evaluators. OpenAI is also believed to back a second proposal under development. Reuters reported that Majority Leader John Thune is working with Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar on a bill that would give the Commerce Secretary the power to subject new models to safety audits before their release.