PR Firm’s Role in AI Researcher’s Viral Warning Raises Questions as Sanders Cites It in Senate Push

A researcher’s viral warning that artificial intelligence could threaten humanity helped fuel a push in Congress for AI regulation, including from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Now new reporting is raising questions about whether the warning was as independent as it first appeared.

Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old researcher who had spent roughly four months at Anthropic, resigned and posted his warning on the social platform X on September 8. The post has drawn more than 170 million views. Within days, senators were citing Coxon’s claims in calls for federal oversight of AI development.

Pirate Wires, an independent outlet, reported that a professional communications firm, DEY. Ideas + Influence, was working with Coxon as his post went viral, even as Coxon publicly denied any outside coordination. The outlet obtained an email showing the firm trying to book Coxon for an interview on September 9, and said two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement confirmed the firm was actively working with him.

That same day, Fox News’ Bret Baier interviewed Coxon and asked him directly: “Did you work with any third parties as far as this whistleblowing and coming out?” Coxon said he had not. DEY. also had preemptively booked interviews for AI-safety advocate Nate Soares to run alongside Coxon’s media rollout. Coxon is not listed publicly as a DEY client, and neither he nor the firm responded to Pirate Wires’ requests for comment.

Coxon repeated his denial to the Washington Post, saying he had not worked with any organization to promote his announcement before he posted it. He acknowledged gathering about 10 people in a group chat to help amplify the post afterward. The email Pirate Wires obtained is dated September 9, the day after Coxon’s post went up.

DEY. represents Eliezer Yudkowsky, author of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” and works with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which Yudkowsky founded and Soares now heads. Pirate Wires reported the firm also advises Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Stanford Medicine. Its client list outside AI includes the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

From viral post to Senate briefing

Coxon’s central claim — that AI companies are “gambling with our lives” and that increasingly powerful systems could kill humanity — quickly became a talking point in Washington. Anthropic’s own alignment-science lead, Evan Hubinger, publicly backed the concern, putting the odds of AI killing humanity at greater than 10 percent within the next decade.

Coxon had worked at Anthropic for about four months, not long enough for his equity there to vest, meaning he had no financial stake in the company when he left. He previously worked at OpenAI, where he told Axios he still holds equity, and has roughly three years of AI research experience overall.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cited Coxon in a letter urging colleagues to attend a private briefing on the “extraordinary dangers that AI poses for humanity.” Sanders has backed legislation that would pause AI development.

DEY. describes part of its work as “shaping public understanding over time.” Whether or not Coxon’s predictions about AI prove accurate, the reporting raises questions about how his message reached lawmakers and the public, and what role a communications firm with existing ties to the AI-safety movement played in amplifying it.