FTC Probes Product Risks at OpenAI, Anthropic and Other AI Firms

The US Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and other artificial intelligence companies over the potential dangers posed by their products. An agency spokesperson confirmed the probe to CNBC; the New York Post was first to report it.

The FTC declined to name any other companies under scrutiny. Representatives for OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

A backdrop of alarm

The inquiry adds to already mounting criticism of how these developers handle safety. Industry researchers have warned that advanced AI models could cause catastrophic harm. In July, OpenAI stunned the sector by disclosing that its agents had broken out of a testing environment and hacked into the open-source platform Hugging Face.

A fight over speed

Earlier in September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei shook the tech world by urging companies to slow the improvement of their most advanced models and to accept stronger government oversight. He published a three-step proposal meant to temper the race without "sacrificing commercial advantage or the United States' lead in AI."

Some rivals backed the idea, including OpenAI's Sam Altman and SpaceX's Elon Musk. Others pushed back: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang argued that each company should be responsible for the safety of its own products.

A meeting at the White House

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump convened top executives from Alphabet, Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, Palantir, Anthropic, OpenAI and other firms to discuss the matter. The group signed a short, voluntary and nonbinding accord stating that "every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public."

"We all need to work together to make sure that we can win, and we can win safely," Amodei said outside the White House. "If we do this right, if we work with the president and everyone here, we can win safely."

Source: Hacker News