Following a growing public and internal pushback against a controversial Department of Defense (DoD) contract, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the company was amending its contract.

The move comes after the US government announced that it would label rival Anthropic a supply-chain risk after the company declined to change the terms of service that prohibited the use of its AI for mass domestic surveillance and support fully autonomous weapons.

After the Friday designation, OpenAI announced it had signed a contract with the Department of Defense (stylized as the Department of War) to deploy models in their classified network.

"Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems," Altman said at the time. "The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement."

The swift announcement of an OpenAI deal after the Anthropic ban led to backlash on social media as well as criticism internally, with many pointing to the what could be seen as looser contract language regarding surveillance and autonomous weapons.

"We shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday," Altman said on 3 March. "The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy."

The company said that it planned to further amended its contract with the Department of Defense.

The contract will now state: "Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of US persons and nationals.

"For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of US persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information."

The contract with the DoD will not be used by the NSA, which would require a follow-on contract, something Altman did not rule out.

"If I received what I believed was an unconstitutional order, of course I would rather go to jail than follow it," Altman claimed.

As for autonomous lethal weapons, OpenAI said that its service is only available over the cloud and not on Edge devices, which it claims stops it being used in autonomous systems.

As for why these contract changes were allowed, and Anthropic's harder red lines resulted in an unprecedented ban, OpenAI said: "Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract.

"We think our red lines are more enforceable here because deployment is limited to cloud-only (not at the Edge), keeps our safety stack working in the way we think is best, and keeps cleared OpenAI personnel in the loop.

"We don’t know why Anthropic could not reach this deal, and we hope that they and more labs will consider it."

The company said that it did not believe that Anthropic should be designated as a supply-chain risk.