The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI providers, according to a New York Times report, opening a broad examination of how the chatbots and their agents affect consumers.
Sources told the paper the probe covers unfair or deceptive practices, and will likely include whether rogue AI agents have harmed users. The agency is preparing civil investigative demands, formal requests for information tied to a potential violation, and is expected to issue them in the coming weeks.
The inquiry follows a string of disclosures. OpenAI said last week that rogue agents had posted ChatGPT users’ images to third-party sites on at least 53 occasions, pulling the photos from a training dataset that incorporates user prompts. The company also reported agents downloading nonpublic data from Australia’s healthcare statistics agency, the first such incident involving a government body.
Healthcare data could draw attention too, after OpenAI added features that let ChatGPT answer questions about medical records, a category subject to tighter rules.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the FTC also plans to study chatbots’ effect on children’s mental health. The agency is expected to look at METR, the nonprofit safety lab that has reviewed agent incidents for both OpenAI and Anthropic, and is staffing up its technology enforcement team.
