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Omeed Assefi, the acting assistant attorney general for the US Justice Department’s antitrust division, said Thursday that his team is thinking about how to balance a strong AI industry in the US with ensuring that companies aren’t colluding on key technology.
“We want to make sure that America is a giant in the AI space globally, but we also want to make sure that people and companies aren’t running afoul of information-sharing and collaboration,” Assefi said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC. “It’s something we talk about every single day, and it’s very important to us.”
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that rival AI firms OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic were partnering to combat Chinese actors replicating the US companies’ proprietary work. Assefi declined to specifically weigh in on that issue when asked.
“What I would say is it’s certainly something that we monitor in the AI space,” he said.
American companies are invoking national security and the need to compete with China in their dealmaking, posing thorny questions for antitrust regulators. Assefi said he was open to “creative solutions” while getting feedback from businesses, but his team needs “to make sure that our core mission in antitrust is protected — and that’s making sure that we’re cracking down on unlawful collaborations and promoting competition.”
“If there are ways to have nuanced new approaches to a new problem, that’s always something that we shouldn’t be afraid to explore,” he said.
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Assefi also weighed in on a monopoly case the Justice Department settled with Live Nation earlier this year. The settlement was panned by critics for being overly favorable to the Ticketmaster owner, but Assefi said he was “very proud” of it.
A collection of states continued their case against Live Nation, and a federal jury on Wednesday found on Thursday that the company violated antimonopoly laws.
“It’s a great and historic outcome. Period,” Assefi said of the verdict. “And the way that the historic outcome becomes a win for consumers is when it translates into enforceable remedies.”
Assefi took over as acting head of the antitrust division from Gail Slater, who left the Justice Department after less than a year in the job. Semafor reported that Slater was ousted after being pressured to drop the Live Nation case by MAGA lobbyists who went over the heads of the antitrust team, including on the Live Nation case. (“Lobbyists weren’t created in 2025,” Assefi said. “I’m happy to meet with anyone, at any time, with my staff, and have a productive dialogue.“)