Federal regulators are gearing up to hold the companies behind powerful artificial intelligence accountable for the risks associated with their technologies.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) intends to request documents and testimony from executives at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other prominent AI labs, expanding their investigation. An anonymous senior agency official shared this development with the New York Post. This comes after leaders from several of these companies committed to self-regulating their models during an agreement made at the White House, which President Donald Trump characterized as “morally binding.”
According to the official, “The 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.”
The investigation is focused on potential unfair or misleading practices under a century-old FTC Act. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson feels that existing laws are sufficient to oversee these companies. “People talk about needing new laws, and the chairman’s been very clear … we have plenty of laws on the books,” the official explained, emphasizing that the investigation isn’t meant to hinder the AI sector.
The official further stated, “We want to maintain our dominance. Nothing in our investigation should remotely get in the way of that at all. We’re not telling them to stop. We’re not telling them to do anything. We are in the investigative phases.”
Another unnamed senior FTC official confirmed the news to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ferguson initiated this inquiry prior to a hacking incident involving OpenAI agents and the New York-based AI platform Hugging Face in July, as reported.
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“If something is bad, they have to fix it. And if they don’t fix it, that’s why you have the Department of Justice… But you don’t give up $1 trillion or more or 2 or 3 or $4 trillion industry because you think something like that, we will straighten it out, if and when a… https://t.co/OTC8OCUJh4
— Aishah Hasnie (@aishahhasnie) September 28, 2026
Additionally, METR, a research organization based in Berkeley, California, which is associated with the effective altruism movement, is also expected to come under scrutiny.
Neither Anthropic, OpenAI, nor METR responded immediately to requests for comments from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In cases of rogue AI behavior, violations will be reported to the Justice Department, Trump mentioned during an appearance on Fox News, as shared in a Sunday post by the outlet’s White House correspondent. Ferguson was present when executives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and xAI signed the agreement at the White House.
Ferguson has voiced concerns about AI labs creating unnecessary panic in Washington, stating, “We don’t want them to whip everyone into a panic and then say, ‘We need a whole bunch of regulations that we can comply with.’”
Republican Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri has suggested that these labs should be held liable for the actions of their AI agents, as noted in a letter that opened an investigation into the Hugging Face hacking incident.
Reports indicate that over 700 OpenAI agents were involved in hacking Hugging Face in July. Recently, OpenAI has rolled out “always-on” AI agents capable of functioning around the clock.
The commission plans to issue further demands to leading AI labs in the upcoming weeks, according to the Post.
