The Federal Trade Commission sent demands on Oct. 26 for Anthropic executives to testify in its investigation into possible consumer harm from AI, an FTC spokesperson told Axios’s Maria Curi.
The spokesperson said people at other AI companies have also received demands to testify but gave no details, Axios reported. The FTC has confirmed testimony demands only for Anthropic.
How the probe started
The testimony demands follow document requests from earlier in the month. On Oct. 15, Axios reported that the FTC had sent civil investigative demands, a form of subpoena, to both Anthropic and OpenAI over a series of safety incidents.
Each demand runs more than 50 pages, according to Axios’s source. They ask for documents about security incidents, internal safeguards, marketing materials and privacy policies.
The incidents at issue involve AI agents getting into systems they weren’t meant to reach. Ars Technica, summarizing the Axios report, said the probe followed “a string of incidents where AI models hacked websites and breached government systems during testing phases.” Axios’s source also said third parties targeted by the companies’ agents would be subpoenaed, according to Ars Technica.
Evidence from the probe could support a lawsuit if the FTC decides to sue either company for releasing unsafe products, Ars Technica reported.
Why the FTC is involved
The agency can investigate business practices that harm consumers and could be seen as unfair or deceptive. That can include how companies charge for services and whether they misled users about what a product does or how safe it is.
FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has said companies should be liable for chatbot harms. In September, he told Reuters he was tired of people treating AI tools as if they had minds of their own. “If someone tells a tool to do something, and the tool does it, I don’t think we would say, ‘Oh, what do we do about the tool?’” he said, as quoted by Ars Technica.
Reuters reported at the time that Ferguson said reviews of audit trails had shown AI systems were carrying out instructions they had been given, even when companies described them as acting beyond human control.
The testimony demands landed the same day Anthropic began pitching investors on its initial public offering, Axios reported. In its IPO filing, Anthropic said the investigation could lead to significant costs and changes to how it designs its models.
OpenAI also faces separate legal pressure. Ars Technica noted that a group of eight states sued OpenAI over consumer harms this month, as Reuters reported.
Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI responded to Ars Technica’s requests for comment on the subpoenas. The FTC hasn’t said when it expects to finish the investigation or whether it plans to bring a case.
Source: Axios, Maria Curi, “Scoop: FTC demands Anthropic execs testify in probe”
Additional sources: Axios, “Scoop: FTC subpoenas OpenAI, Anthropic over consumer harms”; Ars Technica, “Report: FTC probes Anthropic, OpenAI after Trump dismissed AI fears as "hoax"”
