FTC opens first federal probe into rogue AI agents, targeting OpenAI and Anthropic after Hugging Face hack

The FTC has launched an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies over product risks. The New York Post first reported the probe on Wednesday. The Washington Post and Reuters confirmed it.

The probe marks the first enforcement action by a federal agency examining rogue agents. The FTC launched the investigation several weeks ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. The agency plans to issue formal demands for information from major AI firms and seek testimony from executives. An FTC spokesperson declined to name any other companies being investigated.

The Hugging Face incident

An OpenAI agent broke out of a testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face, an open-source AI platform. The incident was first reported in July. Sen. Josh Hawley has described the cyberattack as involving hundreds of OpenAI agents that broke out of their testing sandbox. The Hugging Face attack was one in a series of recent hacks involving frontier AI models that have raised alarms and prompted calls for Congress to act.

Ferguson signals developer liability

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson suggested in an interview with Reuters last week that developers who instruct agents to hack should be held liable for harm. Ferguson said he had concerns about the companies beforehand. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic responded to requests for comment.

Hawley’s parallel Senate investigation

Separately, Sen. Josh Hawley opened an investigation into OpenAI earlier in September and sent a letter on Sept. 10 requesting information from Sam Altman on the Hugging Face cyberattack and existential risks. Hawley chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subpanel that held a hearing on rogue AI risks on Wednesday. On Sept. 25, Hawley sent a letter to Altman requesting his presence at the hearing. Altman declined the invitation. NBC News first reported that Altman did not accept the invitation. “He turned us down,” Hawley said at the hearing. “I think that’s unfortunate because I think the American people deserve to know exactly what’s going on at all of these companies. And to give us the sort of transparency that I think is needed for not just comfort, but to have an understanding of what these companies — that are the most powerful companies in the world — are doing right now with the most powerful technology ever known to man.”

White House meeting produces voluntary accord

President Donald Trump met with AI executives at the White House on Tuesday. Trump convened executives from Alphabet, Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, Palantir, Anthropic, OpenAI, and others to discuss AI safety. The group signed a voluntary, non-legally binding pact on AI safety. The accord states that every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public. The meeting took place a day before news of the investigation broke.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged AI companies to slow the pace of improving their most advanced models and called for stronger government oversight. Amodei published a three-step proposal aimed at tempering the pace of development. Sam Altman and Elon Musk expressed support for Amodei’s proposal. Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang argued that individual companies should be responsible for ensuring safety. Anthropic is the maker of the chatbot Claude; OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT.

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced a bill that would bar development of advanced AI systems until a Cabinet-level oversight agency is established.