The Federal Trade Commission confirmed on Wednesday that it is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI labs over the danger their systems pose to the public. The agency opened the probe this summer, a spokesperson said; it became public a day after Trump's accord, when the New York Post reported it. The agency is drafting civil investigative demands — formal orders that work like subpoenas and can force executives to testify — and expects to send them within weeks, the Post reported. The FTC wants to know whether the companies broke the FTC Act.
The timing is the story. Twenty-four hours before the probe surfaced, Trump sat in the White House with Anthropic's chief executive, OpenAI's president, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and the heads of Google and Nvidia and signed the Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities. The companies promised "robust" controls, internal monitoring teams and outside auditors. The document names no regulator, carries no penalty and does not say who the auditors would be. Trump called it "morally binding." "They understand that they have to self-police," he said.
