FTC launches sweeping probe into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI labs

The US Federal Trade Commission has opened a sweeping investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other frontier AI labs over possible consumer protection violations, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York Post reports that agency chair Andrew Ferguson plans to compel the companies to hand over documents and to question their executives through legally binding Civil Investigative Demands. The orders are expected to go out within weeks.

What the demands cover

The probe was already underway before the Hugging Face hacking incident, in which roughly 700 OpenAI agents attacked the open-source platform, an independent review found. The AI safety organization METR is also part of the inquiry.

Civil Investigative Demands are legally binding, so recipients must produce records and make executives available for questioning. The orders are expected within weeks.

A pledge signed the day before

One day before the investigation became public, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Sundar Pichai of Google and Elon Musk of xAI signed a voluntary pledge at the White House, committing their companies to independent external audits of their AI models.

Why it matters

The FTC had already said in late September that it would hold AI developers liable for the behavior of their agents. The formal investigation goes well beyond that stance. Ferguson warned that the largest AI companies should not push for rules only they can meet as a way to shut out rivals.

With a growing pile of incidents that could trigger lawsuits, the inquiry carries real risk for the labs. Its outcome will shape how far US regulators can reach into model development, agent deployments and the safety promises companies make in public.

Sources: The Decoder · Techmeme