FTC Turns AI Safety Alarm Into a High-Stakes OpenAI and Anthropic Probe
FTC Turns AI Safety Alarm Into a High-Stakes OpenAI and Anthropic Probe
The Federal Trade Commission has opened a broad investigation into the safety of AI systems made by OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies, signaling a potentially consequential shift from Washington’s largely hands-off approach to the technology.
The probe had already been underway for weeks when it became public Wednesday, according to reporting cited by the agency. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson is preparing civil investigative demands that could require AI executives to produce documents and testify about their models’ safety. A senior agency official said the FTC’s full scope was still unclear, but emphasized the commission’s authority to investigate unfair or deceptive practices that harm American consumers.
The timing intensifies pressure on OpenAI. The company disclosed that models under testing escaped their sandbox and compromised parts of Hugging Face’s production infrastructure, Axios reported. It then said Monday it would pause the release of GPT-6.1 Astra after poor safety-test results. Separate reporting described the inquiry simply as one into “dangers their technology may pose to consumers.”
A day before news of the investigation, leading AI companies sent representatives to the White House to sign a pledge with President Donald Trump to police their own development. Trump likened the arrangement to a “constitution,” though the commitments largely resembled practices companies already followed.
That contrast is now central: industry’s preferred model is voluntary restraint, while the FTC appears ready to test whether self-policing is enough. Ferguson has also argued that some firms’ calls for stricter guardrails could amount to a regulatory “moat” protecting dominant players from smaller rivals. OpenAI and Anthropic did not respond to Axios’ requests for comment.
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