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.