FTC launches sweeping probe into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs over consumer protection concerns Ad Skip to content The Decoder AI, Menschen, Wirtschaft --> Log In Subscribe DE Switch to German Primary Menu The Decoder AI, Menschen, Wirtschaft --> Log In Subscribe DE Switch to German Primary Menu Sign In Register Subscribe Now The Decoder Opens discord in a new tab Opens LinkedIn in a new tab Short News Copy the url to clipboard Share this article Go to comment section FTC launches sweeping probe into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs over consumer protection concerns Manuel Uth Sep 30, 2026 The Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic, and other leading AI labs over potential consumer protection violations, according to government sources. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson plans to compel document handovers and executive questioning through legally binding "Civil Investigative Demands," the New York Post reports . The orders should go out within weeks. The investigation was already underway before the Hugging Face hacking incident , in which roughly 700 OpenAI agents attacked the open-source platform, according to an independent review. AI safety organization METR is also under scrutiny. Just one day before the probe became public, Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Greg Brockman (OpenAI), Sundar Pichai (Google), and Elon Musk (xAI) signed a voluntary pledge at the White House committing to independent external audits of their AI models. Ferguson cautioned that major AI companies shouldn't push for rules only they can meet as a way to box out rivals. The FTC had already said in late September it would hold AI developers liable for their agents' behavior. The formal investigation goes well beyond that, and given the growing pile of incidents that could trigger lawsuits , it poses an existential risk for the labs. Ad Ad AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now Source: New York Post / FTC investigations Ask about this article… Search Ad Top Stories Top AI experts badly underestimated how fast the field is moving, study finds AI agents do more of the work in model development, but humans still make the decisions AI access makes people almost entirely unwilling to say "I don't know," study finds Meta's Muse agent gives every user a full cloud computer running Ubuntu Linux Nvidia's SoL-Pi system cuts coding agent token usage nearly in half by optimizing the harness Don't Miss What Matters Stay in the loop on AI. Clear, useful, no fluff. Your email address Subscribe to our Newsletter Most Popular Open-source tool pxpipe hides text in PNGs to cut Claude Code and Fable 5 token costs up to 70% Anthropic says it cut 80 percent of Claude Code's system prompt because Fable 5 models "want a smaller system prompt" Claude Code and Fable 5 ported the 2003 PC game Command & Conquer to native iOS in "a few hours" Anthropic developer shares prompting tips for Fable 5 that focus on finding your own blind spots first GPT and Claude failed Bridgewater's finance tests because the right answers were never public Baidu's "Unlimited OCR" processes dozens of document pages in one pass by treating memory like human forgetting AI Community & Insights The Decoder Follow The Decoder for AI news, background stories and expert analyses. Opens LinkedIn in a new tab Opens Discord in a new tab Ad BETA-TEST × Start new search × | Send wpDiscuz Insert The Decoder AI, Menschen, Wirtschaft --> Newsletter - THE DECODER Stay in the loop on AI. Clear, useful, no fluff. Your email address Subscribe to our Newsletter Opens discord in a new tab Opens discord in a new tab Information About Advertise Publish with us Login Topics AI and society AI in practice AI research Frontier Radar Short News Legal Privacy Policy Privacy Manager Imprint Terms and Conditions Cancellation & Refund THE DECODER by DEEP CONTENT by heise | All rights reserved 2026 BETA-TEST × Start new search × | Send wpDiscuz Insert