FTC Hits OpenAI and Anthropic With Subpoenas in Broad AI Consumer Protection Probe

The Federal Trade Commission sent civil subpoenas of more than 50 pages each to OpenAI and Anthropic on Wednesday, initiating an investigation into potential consumer protection violations regarding AI safety, according to Axios. The agency is demanding internal documents detailing security incidents, model safeguards, privacy policies, and marketing materials from the frontier AI labs, adding to recent formal information requests deployed by international regulators. Regulators also plan to compel top executives from both companies to testify about their products, with the probe potentially expanding to third-party AI organizations at a later date. The federal action aligns with a newly filed lawsuit by a group of state attorneys general, which accuses OpenAI of misleading users, including children, about the safety of its chatbots.