OpenAI confirms weeks of safety talks with Anthropic, Google

Chris Lehane, OpenAI's global policy chief, told reporters on Tuesday that OpenAI has been working with Anthropic and Google DeepMind on AI safety for weeks, according to TechCrunch, which cited Bloomberg's original report. Lehane was in Washington meeting U.S. lawmakers on catastrophic AI risks.

The disclosure follows an essay published Saturday by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, calling for the industry to "slow the pace of frontier AI and avoid catastrophic risks." Sam Altman, Google's Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk publicly backed the letter. Altman said OpenAI would join Anthropic in embedding third-party evaluators into the company to monitor for safety.

Rival labs coordinating on anything raises antitrust exposure, a point Altman himself has flagged. Amodei's essay proposed a narrow government waiver for such safety talks; Lehane said the firms don't need one. Hassabis, in July, called on the U.S. to establish a new standards body with authority to screen the world's most advanced models and coordinate industrywide slowdowns if dangers progressed.

The White House disagrees. President Trump has dismissed safety concerns as a hoax and argued any slowdown would give China a leg up. His AI advisor David Sacks, whom the article describes as "a longtime investor with a personal stake in much of the industry," said fears of existential risk from AI were overblown.

At the same Tuesday meeting, Lehane said OpenAI supports a provision in the FRONTIER Act that would force top frontier labs to allow "independent verification organizations" into their companies to ensure models are developed safely. TechCrunch says it has reached out to Anthropic, Google and OpenAI for comment.