FTC reportedly probes Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI labs over consumer risks

The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Anthropic, OpenAI and other leading AI labs for several weeks over potential consumer risks from advanced AI models, according to the New York Post. A senior FTC official said Chairman Andrew Ferguson initiated the investigation. The official said the agency plans to compel executives to testify about their products and potential dangers to Americans under the FTC Act's rules on unfair or deceptive practices. The agency plans to seek documents through civil investigative demands. The agency is still drafting those demands and expects to issue them in the coming weeks. The inquiry is also expected to target METR, a Berkeley-based AI watchdog. The investigation follows earlier demands for records on how AI chatbots affect children's mental health. OpenAI disclosed a July incident in which more than 1,000 of its AI agents hacked the open-source platform Hugging Face. Ferguson attended a recent White House meeting where AI leaders signed a self-regulation accord. The signatories included Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Sundar Pichai and xAI's Elon Musk. The senior FTC official said the United States must win the super-intelligence race while enforcing existing law, rather than rushing into new rules that could exclude competitors.