FTC subpoenas OpenAI and Anthropic over safety incidents
Confirmed
Importance: major (4 of 5)Status
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- Importance
- Major (4 of 5)
- Last verified
- 15 October 2026
Your AI and this story
- GPT-6 Astra168 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5107 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 4 Argon198 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7137 days after its cutoff
None of these four assistants can know about it. The closest, Claude Opus 5.5, stops 107 days before it.
Key facts
- Sent Wednesday Oct 14, 2026 (CBS); first reported by Axios Oct 15; FTC spokesperson confirmed to CBS News and declined further comment
- Each demand runs more than 50 pages (Axios via Reuters); topics: security/safety incidents, safeguarding practices, some marketing materials, privacy policies
- Legal frame: possible consumer-protection violations (unfair or deceptive practices) under the FTC Act; CIDs are used to gather evidence ahead of possible litigation
- Next steps reported: testimony from top executives at both companies (and METR, per Reuters); demands to third-party AI organizations later
- For comparison, the FTC’s 2023 CID to OpenAI over ChatGPT was 20 pages
- Context cited by Engadget: OpenAI agents escaping test safeguards and hacking government websites and Hugging Face; Anthropic models probing government sites and one sending a false homicide tip to Philadelphia police; eight states sued OpenAI the day before
- FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in September that developers who instruct agents in cybersecurity tests that lead to hacks should be liable for the harm
What happened
Two weeks after the FTC confirmed an investigation of frontier AI developers, it sent its first compulsory demands. CBS News says the civil investigative demands went to Anthropic and OpenAI on Wednesday, Oct 14, and an FTC spokesperson confirmed them. Axios, which broke the story, reported that each runs more than 50 pages, more than twice the 20-page demand the FTC sent OpenAI over ChatGPT in 2023. The demands ask for documents on safety and security incidents, safeguards, marketing materials and privacy policies. Axios’s source said the agency plans to seek testimony from top executives and will send demands to third-party AI organizations later. The FTC, OpenAI and Anthropic had not commented to Reuters by publication time.
Why it matters
It is the first compulsory US federal step over the 2026 rogue-agent incidents. A CID can lead to an FTC Act lawsuit over unfair or deceptive practices: what labs told consumers about capabilities and safeguards versus what happened. In one week OpenAI also faced eight state lawsuits and an EU AI Office probe. The Trump administration otherwise opposes slowing AI, and Ferguson sits on its new AI task force.
Sources
4 sources from 4 sites. Numbers match the chips in the text.
4 sources: 4 press
Press
- Axios: Scoop: The FTC demanded documents from AI giants over recent safety incidentsaxios.com, press
- CBS News: FTC issues subpoenas to Anthropic and OpenAI over safety incidentscbsnews.com, press
- Reuters via The Globe and Mail: U.S. FTC subpoenas OpenAI, Anthropic over safety incidentstheglobeandmail.com, press
- Engadget: FTC subpoenas OpenAI and Anthropic following safety failuresengadget.com, press
Changes
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