{"id":361592,"date":"2026-10-01T06:08:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T06:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/361592\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T06:08:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T06:08:53","slug":"ftc-opens-sweeping-probe-of-anthropic-openai-and-other-super-intelligence-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/361592\/","title":{"rendered":"FTC opens sweeping probe of Anthropic, OpenAI and other ‘super intelligence’ models"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 The Federal Trade Commission is ramping up a sweeping probe of Anthropic<\/a>, OpenAI and other frontier labs to uncover the potential dangers their technology poses to consumers, and plans to slap the tech titans with formal demands, similar to subpoenas, to turn over information, administration officials told The Post.<\/p>\n

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson launched the investigation before one of the AI models went rogue during a test \u2014 in what\u2019s since been dubbed the \u201cHugging Face incident\u201d \u2014 but the agency is now drafting civil investigative demands to force testimony from the leading firms\u2019 executives.<\/p>\n

\u201cChairman Ferguson initiated an investigation into the leading AI firms a few weeks ago,\u201d a senior FTC official revealed to The Post.<\/p>\n

CEO and co-founder of Anthropic Dario Amodei, left, responds to a question from the news media as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson listens outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. SHAWN THEW\/EPA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cThe agency has plans to compel the executives at these firms to testify about their product [and] about the dangers they allege their products may have to consumers, to Americans,\u201d the official added.<\/p>\n

The probe is looking into allegations of unfair or deceptive acts or practices that run afoul of the FTC Act and will press for documents from the AI or super intelligence firms, as President Trump has dubbed them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to win this SI race absolutely, and we are winning, and that\u2019s fantastic,\u201d the FTC official said. \u201cAnd obviously, the other side, the Democrat Party, wants to destroy this technology, wants to surrender to our enemies or competitors \u2014 and that\u2019s not something that the chairman\u2019s interested in doing and that\u2019s really not something the president\u2019s interested in doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, holds a press briefing with AI executives as CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei, right, speaks following a meeting on artificial intelligence outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. The meeting comes as some have called for a slowdown in AI development amid rising safety concerns. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBut with that being said, the laws have to be followed,\u201d the official added. \u201cPeople talk about how we need new laws for these companies, and the chairman\u2019s been very clear \u2026 we have plenty of laws in the books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump last weekend suggested in an interview with Fox News that any violations would result in a prompt referral to the Department of Justice, leaving the firms on the hook for possible hacks by rogue AI agents that could threaten energy grids or financial institutions.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, several of the top AI firm leaders<\/a> \u2014 including Anthropic\u2019s Dario Amodei, OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman, Google\u2019s Sundar Pichai and XAI\u2019s Elon Musk \u2014 visited the White House to sign an accord with Trump pledging to self-regulate<\/a> their models.<\/p>\n

Ferguson, who has been outspoken about the culpability AI firms face<\/a> for the actions of their agents, was also in attendance.<\/p>\n

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during OpenAI\u2019s annual DevDay event in San Francisco, California, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n

The FTC is expected to issue its civil investigative demands, or CIDs, in the coming weeks, the official noted, with the agency\u2019s Office of Technology drafting new hires for the probe after several under predecessor Lina Khan were fired.<\/p>\n

METR<\/a>, a Berkeley, Calif.-based AI watchdog linked to the effective altruism movement<\/a>, is also expected to be a target of the probe.<\/p>\n

The investigation follows earlier demands for records from OpenAI and other companies about the impacts AI chatbots have on kids\u2019 mental health, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Andrew Ferguson attends an interview with Reuters during Momentum AI Austin 2026, in Austin, Texas, Friday, September 25, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n

AI executives and effective altruists have publicly fretted for years about the risks the new technology poses to humanity absent government interventions but have accelerated their calls in recent weeks for the Trump administration to step in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very important that we not allow these two firms to come to Washington, whip everyone into a panic and then say, \u2018We need a whole bunch of regulations that we can comply with,’\u201d Ferguson told Fox News on Sept. 20. \u201cThat is how companies build a moat around their businesses to make sure that people can\u2019t compete against them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd competition is what is going to make sure that America wins the AI race against China,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Anthropic Co-Founder and CEO Dario Amodei, flanked by U.S. President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., reacts as they speak to the media at the White House driveway following a luncheon for tech leaders in the East Room in Washington, Tuesday, September 29, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n

OpenAI previously disclosed the unprecedented Hugging Face incident in July, when more than 1,000 of its AI agents hacked the open-source development platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to maintain our dominance,\u201d the senior FTC official said. \u201cNothing in our investigation should remotely get in the way of that at all. We\u2019re not telling them to stop. We\u2019re not telling them to do anything. We are in the investigative phase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reps for Anthropic and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The Federal Trade Commission is ramping up a sweeping probe of Anthropic, OpenAI and other frontier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[39434,153,68,4331,19085,9,11,10,3605,87,58],"class_list":["post-361592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-anthropic","tag-donald-trump","tag-exclusive","tag-federal-trade-commission","tag-investigations","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-openai","tag-politics","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}