OpenAI's global policy chief, Chris Lehane, told reporters on Tuesday that the company has been collaborating with rivals Anthropic and Google DeepMind on AI safety for several weeks, confirming earlier reporting by Bloomberg. Lehane is in Washington to engage with U.S. lawmakers on catastrophic risks from AI.

The news follows an essay published Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who urged the industry to work together to slow frontier AI development and avoid catastrophic risks. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Demis Hassabis, and Elon Musk supported Amodei's call to action. Altman said OpenAI would join Anthropic in embedding third-party evaluators to monitor safety.

Lehane acknowledged the talks, noting that such coordination could raise antitrust concerns if found to suppress competition. Amodei proposed a narrow government waiver for safety coordination, but Lehane said the firms don't need one.

Earlier hints of collaboration emerged in an interview with Fortune late last week, where Altman mentioned private discussions with other AI leaders. This week, The Information reported the three companies are working to create an industry standards body—something Altman reportedly told staff would need to happen without U.S. government support.

In July, Hassabis called on the U.S. to establish a standards body to screen advanced models and coordinate industry-wide slowdowns if dangers progress. President Trump has dismissed safety concerns as a hoax and opposed tighter regulations, arguing a slowdown would benefit China. His AI advisor David Sacks echoed that fears of existential risk are overblown.

At the same Tuesday meeting, Lehane said OpenAI supports a provision in the FRONTIER Act that would require top frontier labs to allow independent verification organizations to ensure safe model development. TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI for comment.

Source: TechCrunch