“OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies have actively conspired to mislead the world about the true costs of AI, and it was working great right up until they decided to try charging what it actually cost.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies actively conspired to mislead the world about AI's true costs, and this worked well until they decided to try charging what AI actually costs.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, AI Doesn't Have ROI, paragraph 25.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-ai-doesnt-have-roi-57410c-a2
We recorded 18 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2026-06-02. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies
- actively conspired
- mislead the world about the true costs of AI
- working great right up until
- charging what it actually cost
Our interpretation
- The plain reading alleges knowing coordination between companies to deceive customers about costs, not merely similar pricing strategies or independent promotional claims.
- The claim also alleges that the deception succeeded and ended when companies attempted cost-covering billing.
- The surrounding references to the last few years and Q1 2026 billing changes place the alleged conduct in the period approximately June 2022 through the post.
- This is principally an allegation about coordinated conduct and intent, rather than a specified financial amount.
Counts as supported if: Authenticated communications, admissions, or substantiated investigative findings establish coordinated cost deception involving the named companies, customer deception resulting from it, and the claimed transition to attempted cost-covering charges.
Counts as contradicted if: A sufficiently comprehensive documentary record or substantiated investigation affirmatively disproves the alleged coordination or establishes that the claimed deception and billing sequence did not occur.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
The FTC report released January 17, 2025 expressly makes no assessment of whether anyone engaged in illegal conduct [e1]. Washington Technology's August 21, 2025 article reports Ask Sage's allegations that government agreements misled agencies about costs and capabilities [e2]. The article does not establish coordinated cost deception by OpenAI and Anthropic [e2]. Neither item establishes or affirmatively disproves the alleged coordination, its claimed customer effects, or the claimed transition to cost-covering billing [e1, e2].
Limitations
- The FTC report does not resolve the specific allegation of coordinated cost deception [e1].
- The procurement article reports allegations rather than substantiated findings of coordination or resulting customer deception [e2].
- Neither item supplies matched provider-cost and contract records establishing when charges covered costs [e1, e2].
Evidence (2 items)
Context only: Federal Trade Commission, Office of Technology,
does not reflect any assessment
Why it matters here: The primary regulatory report examines Microsoft–OpenAI, Amazon–Anthropic, and Google–Anthropic partnerships and potential competition concerns. It supplies no finding establishing the alleged cost-deception conspiracy, and its disclaimer also prevents treating it as exoneration.
- Publisher
- Federal Trade Commission, Office of Technology
- Kind of source
- Secondary summary
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: Washington Technology,
Ask Sage claims
Why it matters here: This reports a competitor's procurement protests and concerns about how government agreements were presented. It is evidence of an allegation, not a finding of coordination, successful worldwide deception, or subsequent cost-covering billing; the underlying protest was not obtained.
- Publisher
- Washington Technology
- Kind of source
- News report
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
Authenticated communications or substantiated investigative findings establishing or affirmatively disproving the alleged coordination, plus evidence of customer effects and dated billing records matched to defined provider costs to test the claimed sequence through June 2, 2026.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, AI Doesn't Have ROI
OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies have actively conspired to mislead the world about the true costs of AI, and it was working great right up until they decided to try charging what it actually cost.
- Where
- paragraph 25
- Published
- 2026-06-02
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-ai-doesnt-have-roi-57410c-a2: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.