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Justice Department Open to Talks With AI Labs on Safety Coordination

By  |  September 17, 2026
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The US Justice Department sees little immediate antitrust concern in artificial-intelligence companies working together on safety measures, offering a potentially important signal to an industry debating how rivals can cooperate as increasingly powerful models raise new risks.

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    Stanley Woodward, the associate attorney general who leads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said Thursday that frontier AI developers have not approached the agency seeking discussions about whether such cooperation could run afoul of competition law, according to Reuters.

    Speaking during an event at Fordham University in New York, Woodward indicated that collaboration focused on cybersecurity or broader security issues does not, on its face, appear anticompetitive. The department is also examining whether existing guidance that permits certain forms of corporate coordination on cybersecurity should be updated, Reuters reported.

    The comments could help clarify the legal backdrop for some of the world’s largest AI developers as they consider joint approaches to managing risks from advanced systems. The Justice Department remains willing to meet with companies about the issue, Woodward said, according to Reuters, though no frontier AI laboratory has yet requested such a meeting.

    The question has taken on greater urgency after Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei called last week for antitrust clearance that would allow competing AI developers to coordinate on slowing the pace of development because of safety concerns, Reuters reported.

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    Read more: FTC Chair Casts Doubt on Antitrust Exemptions for AI Industry

    Separately, OpenAI has been discussing AI safety with Anthropic and Alphabet Inc.’s Google DeepMind for several weeks. OpenAI global policy chief Chris Lehane said the company did not believe an antitrust waiver was necessary for those discussions.

    The debate reflects a widening tension in the AI industry. Developers are racing to build more capable systems while researchers, executives and policymakers examine whether existing safeguards can keep pace with advances in autonomous models.

    Concerns intensified after Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic, resigned and publicly described severe worries among people developing advanced AI about the technology’s potential consequences, according to Reuters.

    The Justice Department’s position stops short of establishing a blanket exemption from antitrust law. Still, Woodward’s remarks suggest that regulators may distinguish cooperation intended to address safety and cybersecurity from coordination that could improperly restrict competition.

    For AI companies, that distinction may become increasingly significant as rivals explore whether some safety standards require collective action even as they continue competing for customers, computing resources and technological leadership.

    Source: Reuters