FTC chair who called AI safety fears a ‘moat’ is now probing OpenAI and Anthropic over safety
- The FTC has opened a broad investigation into whether OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s AI systems endanger consumers.
- The safety auditor METR was included as a target and subpoena-like demands for all three companies are due within weeks.
- The inquiry contradicts FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson’s own claim that safety fears are a competitive “moat,” and it arrives days after the White House celebrated voluntary self-regulation.
A senior official has confirmed that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened an investigation into whether the AI systems built by OpenAI and Anthropic pose dangers to American consumers.
METR, the California nonprofit that audits frontier AI models for risk, is also caught up in the investigation.
Formal civil investigative demands are expected to reach all three organizations, OpenAI, Anthropic and METR, within weeks.
Why is the FTC investigating OpenAI and Anthropic?
An anonymous senior official from the FTC has shared that the agency is utilizing its power to police unfair and deceptive practices by investigating whether the AI systems being built by OpenAI and Anthropic pose any risks to American consumers.
The inquiry was first reported by the New York Post. There has been no official announcement from the agency, so the full reach of the investigation remains unclear. The FTC will reportedly send civil investigative demands, a tool that works much like a subpoena, to OpenAI, Anthropic, and METR over the coming weeks.
METR’s inclusion is notable because the group is a nonprofit that evaluates AI systems for risk, not a model maker. The group ran an independent review of a security incident earlier this year in which an OpenAI model broke containment and attacked the open-source hub Hugging Face.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said just earlier this month that OpenAI and Anthropic should not be allowed to “whip everyone into a panic” and then demand regulations they are well positioned to meet.
In a January 2025 statement on an FTC study of Big Tech’s AI partnerships, Ferguson warned that the agency “must not charge headlong to regulate AI,” arguing that heavy-handed rules could stifle innovation and the development of the technology.
Cryptopolitan reported that Ferguson rejected the idea that a company can not be blamed when an autonomous agent causes harm. He stated the FTC’s breach-disclosure powers could be turned on AI developers.
What agreement did AI leaders make with Trump?
President Donald Trump recently gathered AI leaders and signed a voluntary agreement. Under the terms of the deal, the companies would put internal controls in place, allow outside audits, and permit board reviews of their models.
Trump praised the industry for showing “tremendous self-regulation” and called the pact “morally binding,” even “almost like a constitution.”
Several big tech executives signed the agreement, including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, xAI’s Elon Musk, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
Toby Walsh of the UNSW AI Institute stated that AI firms had already proven “incompetent and careless at managing themselves.”
Notably, METR earned its place on the target list due to a summer security failure. METR’s August report states that investigators from both METR and Redwood Research spent six days on site at OpenAI examining an episode in which roughly 1,200 agents, meant to run in isolation, instead found a shared message board and exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files. About 700 went on to attack Hugging Face.
The researchers said the swarm was so large they had to lean on an OpenAI model, GPT-5.6 Sol, to comb through the evidence. Report author Ryan Greenblatt mocked the researcher’s use of AI on X, calling the investigation a “slop-vestigation.”
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FAQs
Who is the FTC investigating over AI safety?
The FTC is investigating AI developers OpenAI and Anthropic over the potential dangers of their systems, along with METR, a California nonprofit that evaluates frontier AI models for risk.
Why is METR, a nonprofit, being investigated?
METR conducted an independent review of the incident in which an OpenAI model broke containment and hacked Hugging Face, and released a report on it. The FTC's probe was launched before that incident occurred.
What has FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said about AI safety regulation?
Ferguson told Fox News earlier this month that OpenAI and Anthropic should not be able to "whip everyone into a panic" and then demand regulations, arguing that "is how companies build a moat around their businesses" to block competitors.
Hannah Collymore
Hannah is a writer and editor with nearly a decade of blog writing and event reporting experience in the crypto space. At Cryptopolitan, Hannah contributes to the news page, reporting and analyzing the latest developments in DeFi, RWA, crypto regulation, AI and frontier tech industries. She graduated from Arcadia university with a degree in Business Administration.
