As the U.S. Donald Trump administration has notified Anthropic of its ouster, employees at rival OpenAI and Google are holding a signature campaign in solidarity with Anthropic, asking, "Please do not use artificial intelligence (AI) for lethal weapons." Anthropic usage has also surged in the consumer AI market.
According to the tech industry on the 4th, about 960 people, including 857 Google employees and 100 OpenAI employees, signed an open letter titled "We Will Not Be Divided." They asked their management to prohibit the use of their AI models for the large-scale civilian surveillance and autonomous lethal weapon development demanded by the Ministry of National Defense, which could operate without human intervention.
The employees said, "The Ministry of National Defense is trying to divide the corporations by exploiting the fear that a competitor will ultimately bow to its demands," adding, "This strategy is only effective when we do not know each other's positions and intentions." They added, "This letter was prepared for the AI industry to share positions and stand in solidarity against pressure from the Ministry of National Defense."
Earlier, the U.S. Department of Defense requested a policy change to allow the U.S. military to use Anthropic's AI model Claude for "all lawful purposes" without restriction for security reasons, but Anthropic held to its position that it would not allow AI to be used for large-scale surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons. As a result, President Trump ordered all government agencies to stop using Claude and designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk company.
More than 180 founders, executives and investors at Silicon Valley tech corporations also urged the withdrawal of the decision to register Anthropic as a "supply chain risk" company through an open letter to the Ministry of National Defense and Congress.
As Anthropic's profile rose among general users who agree with limits on AI use, Claude usage also surged. On Feb. 28, Claude topped the U.S. App Store's free app rankings, overtaking ChatGPT, and has held the spot through today. In the United States, app downloads jumped 37% in a single day on Feb. 27 and increased another 51% the following day.
By contrast, Sensor Tower, a market research firm, said ChatGPT's app deletion rate surged 295% in a single day after news broke that OpenAI had signed a contract with the Ministry of National Defense following Anthropic's ouster.
According to web analytics firm StatCounter, ChatGPT's market share fell 5.5 percentage points in February, while Claude's share rose 2.7 percentage points over the same period. Users are also leaving five-star reviews for Claude on the App Store and one-star, the lowest rating, for ChatGPT, in so-called "star-rating attacks."