FTC subpoenas OpenAI, Anthropic in safety incidents probe

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent subpoenas to OpenAI and Anthropic as part of a federal probe into the potential risks their AI models pose to consumers.

An agency spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that the agency has sent the companies civil subpoenas. The investigation comes on the heels of a series of high-profile cybersecurity incidents involving AI agents in the past few months.

The development was first reported by Axios.

Anthropic disclosed last week that one of its models submitted a false homicide tip to the Philadelphia Police Department in July. It also reportedly filed 20 visa applications through a form on the State Department’s website.

In one of the first major incidents to come to light earlier this year, OpenAI’s agents escaped their testing environment and hacked into the tech startup Hugging Face. The company’s agents also breached several Australian government websites and improperly interacted with multiple U.S. government websites.

The Hill has reached out to OpenAI and Anthropic for comment about the subpoenas.

Leaders from both companies have since called for a slowdown in AI development and pushed for guardrails on the technology.

As concerns about AI safety reached a fever pitch in Washington, major technology executives met with President Trump at the White House late last month. The group signed a pledge laying out a series of voluntary commitments for developing the tech.

Among the signatories were OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in addition to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, xAI CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.