FTC staff draft subpoena-like demands for frontier AI companies, a senior official says

The FTC rarely confirms an investigation before its demands go out, and it is rarer still to do so well before any decision on a lawsuit or settlement ^[4]. The best-known exceptions, Meta after Cambridge Analytica in 2018 and Equifax after its 2017 breach ^[8], followed public scandals. A former FTC official explained to Semafor why the agency normally waits. "The simple fact that there is an existing investigation will impact a company's stock price and operations," the official said. ^[9] By that logic, the companies and their backers have been carrying the cost of this inquiry since the New York Post story ^[2]. No demand has been sent yet.

William Kovacic, a former Republican FTC chair, said early confirmation is "unusual." It is also "not in any sense improper," he said. ^[10] "You don't do this unless you want to make clear to the larger public that you're looking at a particular issue," he said ^[11].

In the first possible outcome, the demands go out at the length the official described and staff work them, so the companies face compelled disclosure on their own safety statements however the matter ends. In the second, the demands go out but the file stalls, and the inquiry amounts to signalling. In the third, the demands never go out at all. Lina Khan, the former FTC chair, expects something close to that. "You have on the one hand, these CEOs of these AI companies wining and dining at the White House," she told ABC. "The idea that the next morning they're going to get some type of credible subpoena from the same administration I think just strains credulity." ^[19]

I think the first outcome is likelier than Khan allows. The administration's stated approach is to apply the laws on the books without adding new regulatory requirements ^[12], and Ferguson has said he does not consider the FTC an AI regulator ^[13]. An agency that has ruled out writing rules has only cases left, and in this probe the demand is the step that comes before any lawsuit or settlement ^[4]. The counter-case is serious. The administration's 2025 AI Action Plan called for a review of Biden-era FTC investigations to "ensure they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation" ^[14]. Ferguson has since been appointed to Trump's AI task force ^[15]. That is an awkward setting for a consumer-harm case against the leading labs. If the demands that arrive run to a handful of questions instead of dozens ^[5], or reach only METR, the independent evaluator the inquiry may also target ^[21], Khan was right.