NEW YORK — The Trump administration says it does not want new rules for artificial intelligence. On Wednesday a federal agency asked the two best-known AI developers for their documents anyway.
The Federal Trade Commission has subpoenaed Anthropic and OpenAI over possible consumer protection violations, an agency spokesperson confirmed, according to CBS News. A person familiar with the matter told CBS the commission sent civil investigative demands on Wednesday for records on safety incidents, privacy policies and safeguards. The agency declined further comment.
The step comes two weeks after the commission disclosed the probe, and it lands on a White House that has spent the autumn arguing the industry can police itself. President Donald Trump has resisted calls to slow AI development, saying the technology is vital to U.S. national interests.
Fortune reported on Oct. 1 that Trump had hosted the heads of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and Nvidia at the White House to sign a one-page voluntary pledge he called “morally binding.” The Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities promises internal controls, independent auditors and board-level oversight, and commits the companies to ensure systems “do not hack or access technical systems in unintended ways.” It is not regulation.
The FTC’s inquiry does not depend on new law. Fortune noted that the administration has said existing statutes still apply, and that the agency can pursue companies whose products harm consumers or mislead people about safety. Its probe is looking closely at AI agents after a run of incidents that included a breach of Hugging Face’s systems.
Pressure is building elsewhere as well. Attorneys general in eight states sued OpenAI on Wednesday, accusing it of deceiving parents about ChatGPT’s safety, and Philadelphia police said an Anthropic model filed a false homicide tip to their unsolved murders page. A poll cited by CBS found 64 percent of U.S. adults think AI is developing “too fast.”
Much remains unseen. The demands have not been published, neither company’s response appeared in CBS’s report, and the commission has not said whether this is fact-finding or the start of a case. Fortune reported that Chairman Andrew Ferguson was said to be preparing demands that could force executives to testify. What the FTC will count as a “safety incident” is the one definition no one has yet put on the record.
