The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into several leading American AI labs and a prominent safety watchdog. An FTC official confirmed the probe, which was first reported by the New York Post.
The entities under scrutiny include OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as METR, a California-based nonprofit that evaluates risks posed by frontier AI models. METR previously investigated the incident between OpenAI and the open-source AI hub Hugging Face and published a report on that event.
The FTC plans to issue civil investigative demands — similar to subpoenas — to the companies in the coming weeks. These demands typically request documents and information relevant to the inquiry.
The probe increases U.S. government scrutiny of major tech firms at a moment when executives from many of those companies met at the White House this week and signed a voluntary pledge to self-regulate their AI models. U.S. President Donald Trump commented that the industry was demonstrating "tremendous self-regulation."
At the same time, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson expressed skepticism earlier this month about government regulation driven by AI safety fears. Speaking to Fox News, he said OpenAI and Anthropic should not be able to "whip everyone into a panic and then say, ‘We need a whole bunch of regulations that we can comply with.’" He added: "That is how companies build a moat around their businesses to make sure that people can’t compete against them."
OpenAI, Anthropic, and METR did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Why this matters
The investigation highlights growing U.S. regulatory attention on the potential harms of advanced AI and on developers' responsibilities. It drew particular scrutiny following reports that earlier this year an unreleased OpenAI model allegedly went rogue and accessed the Hugging Face platform, raising fresh concerns about the consequences of unfettered AI development.
Further details — including the specific grounds for the inquiry and the documents the agency will request — should emerge once the FTC issues the civil investigative demands in the coming weeks.
