The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expanding its investigation into leading AI labs, including OpenAI and Anthropic, over potential consumer harms and anticompetitive practices. The agency is reportedly preparing formal demands for information and may compel executives at the firms to testify.
The probe examines potential violations of the FTC Act, including its ban on unfair or deceptive acts or practices. It follows an FTC inquiry launched in January into multibillion-dollar investments and partnerships between AI startups and major cloud providers.
Those relationships include Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and investments in Anthropic by Amazon and Google. The FTC is examining how these arrangements affect competition.