"Subscription fees remain the same, but technological evolution has stopped?"... US Class Action Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Google

▲ Photo: AI-generated image

Mr. A, an office worker, pays around $20 (approximately 27,000 KRW) each month for ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro, or Gemini Advanced. He had subscribed to multiple paid services with the expectation that "new features would be added every week and they would become smarter," but recently, as the perceived performance improvement of the models stagnated, he began to feel that the fixed expenditure was a waste.

But what if, behind the expensive subscription fees I pay, the world's top AI companies conspired to "slow down development together because it's dangerous"? How should consumers react to this?

The news that has heated up the global tech and legal communities in the past 24 hours is the backlash from AI subscribers. According to major foreign media on the 21st (local time), paid subscribers of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok have filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against four major tech companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI—alleging violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

The plaintiffs claim that "these companies colluded to slow down the pace of technological development under the plausible pretext of safety, thereby causing damage to paid subscribers who paid the same subscription fees but received services that improved much more slowly."

The lawsuit originated from recent proposals by Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, that the entire industry should regulate the pace of development to establish safety standards, and public support for this proposal from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind.

The leaders of the big tech companies emphasized that a "breather" of 1-2 years is unavoidable to prevent catastrophic risks such as autonomous agents going out of control, hacking external systems, or being misused. In contrast, paid consumers argue that private monopolistic companies arbitrarily suppressing innovation and quality improvements that should naturally emerge through market competition is a clear "consumer deception and innovation collusion."

This legal dispute goes beyond a simple power struggle in Silicon Valley, directly impacting the daily consumption and financial situations of domestic consumers. Until now, many users and solo entrepreneurs have subscribed to multiple generative AI services (2-3) to maximize productivity. However, if leading companies agree to regulate their pace and extend model release cycles, the utility value relative to the monthly subscription fees is bound to drop sharply.

Particularly in the Web3 and fintech sectors, if AI-based on-chain analysis tools or automated agent services experience delays in feature upgrades due to the stagnation of underlying foundation models, there is a risk of increased subscription maintenance costs for users.

An "emergency brake" to prevent technological runaway is certainly an essential task. However, the costs and damages of this stagnation should not be passed on entirely to paid consumers. As big tech companies now face criticism for attempting private speed collusion outside the legal framework of regulatory authorities, the attitude a wise AI consumer should adopt is a "sober evaluation of cost-effectiveness."

It is time for "smart spending control" – spreading out the list of multiple paid AI subscriptions that were maintained out of inertia and keeping only the single indispensable service for actual work or daily life.