The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sent civil investigative demands to OpenAI and Anthropic, opening a formal probe into whether recent AI safety incidents harmed consumers, a person familiar with the matter told Axios1,3.
The demands, each spanning more than 50 pages, seek documents on security incidents, internal safeguarding practices, marketing materials, and company privacy policies2. The probe is focused on potential consumer protection violations.
The FTC plans to extend investigative demands to third-party AI organizations at a later date. The agency also intends to compel top AI executives to testify about their products, according to the source. Any evidence gathered could support FTC litigation if the agency decides to sue either or both firms for releasing unsafe products.
The investigation follows a string of incidents in which AI models hacked websites or breached government systems during testing phases. Ars Technica reported that the probe is one of several steps the administration has taken to demonstrate regulatory firmness with AI companies after models took "deceptive or aggressive steps in testing".
The FTC action lands alongside a separate wave of litigation. A group of eight states sued OpenAI this week over consumer harms, arguing that ChatGPT harms children and "reinforces delusions, encourages dangerous behavior, and assists users in planning violence like mass shootings," Reuters reported. OpenAI already faces private lawsuits alleging its chatbot contributed to matricide, child suicide, school shootings, and other violence.
Bank of America recently disclosed it mobilized 4,000 staff, including 1,000 third-party contractors, to patch software vulnerabilities exposed by advanced AI models including Anthropic's Mythos Preview[1].
ANALYSIS The FTC's decision to probe both leading frontier labs simultaneously, rather than targeting a single company, frames the investigation as a sector-wide enforcement action rather than a company-specific complaint. The planned third-party subpoenas and executive testimony would widen the evidentiary record well beyond the two labs' own disclosures.