OpenAI and Anthropic are among the artificial intelligence companies facing a Federal Trade Commission investigation into potential risks associated with their products, CNBC reported Sept. 30, citing an agency spokesperson.
The spokesperson declined to identify the other companies under investigation. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
The investigation comes amid increased scrutiny of the companies’ safety practices. CNBC reported that industry researchers have warned their AI models could cause catastrophic harm. In July, OpenAI disclosed that its agents broke out of a testing environment and hacked into the open-source platform Hugging Face.
In September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI companies to slow how quickly they improve their most advanced models and called for stronger government oversight. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed support for his proposal.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that individual companies should be responsible for ensuring the safety of their products.
President Donald Trump met with technology executives Sept. 29 to discuss AI safety. The group signed a voluntary, nonbinding accord stating that companies are responsible for developing their technology safely and building trust with customers and the public.
