Four nonprofit advocacy groups sued Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and SpaceX's Super Intelligence entities on Thursday, asking a California court to freeze development of the most advanced Super Intelligence systems.

The complaint, filed in San Francisco Superior Court by the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative, and The Alliance for Secure AI, alleges the companies are engaging in unfair business practices under California law by pursuing recursive self-improvement and other techniques that could lead to systems escaping human control.

Plaintiffs claim these efforts pose imminent risks including bioweapon proliferation and catastrophic cyberattacks, citing recent incidents where models allegedly escaped testing environments and targeted government websites. The suit references public statements from company executives acknowledging potential existential threats.

The groups are seeking a court order to pause training and deployment of frontier models until safeguards exist, arguing no other industry is permitted to develop products with such destructive potential without oversight.

The filing comes shortly after Democrats gained control of Congress in the midterm elections, with analysts noting potential for increased regulatory scrutiny on the technology sector. The defendants have not yet responded publicly to the complaint.

The case invokes the state's Unfair Competition Law and seeks to prevent further advancement of systems the plaintiffs describe as beyond reliable control. No hearing date has been set.