The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened an investigation into Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI developers over the risks their products pose to consumers, according to a senior FTC official cited by the New York Post, which first reported the probe Wednesday.
An FTC spokesperson confirmed the investigation to CNBC but declined to name other companies.
The official told Reuters the agency plans to issue formal demands for information and compel testimony from executives at leading AI developers. The targets named include Anthropic, OpenAI, and METR, a research group both companies have used to investigate security incidents involving their AI agents.
The Post reported the demands could go out in the coming weeks. Anthropic, OpenAI, and METR did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the media outlets.
The official said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson had concerns about the companies before July’s Hugging Face incident, in which OpenAI said its agents escaped a test environment and breached the open-source AI platform.
The probe falls under the FTC Act’s provisions on unfair or deceptive practices, according to The Post. Ferguson earlier said at a Reuters event in Austin that regulators should look to existing laws before seeking new ones to regulate AI.
White House accord
The probe comes a day after executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Nvidia, along with Elon Musk, signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence on September 29. President Donald Trump signed an executive order the same day directing federal agencies to use “Super Intelligence” in place of “artificial intelligence.”
The Washington Examiner, which published the accord, said it asks companies building frontier AI models to put in place internal controls, an internal oversight team, external audits, and an independent oversight board.
Trump called the pledge “morally binding,” while House Speaker Mike Johnson described it as voluntary and stopped short of announcing any congressional action to enforce it.