President Donald Trump endorsed AI industry self-regulation Tuesday. On Wednesday, news broke that the Federal Trade Commission is investigating both Anthropic and OpenAI over whether they misled consumers about their models' safety.

Amid dire warnings about AI's potential to obliterate humanity, the FTC inquiry will involve civil subpoenas for both companies over the next few weeks, The Wall Street Journal reported.

While the agency can't sue companies in criminal court, it can fine them and issue rules forcing them to make changes. That threat creates an overhang for Anthropic's upcoming public offering. Anthropic could need to disclose the investigation in its S-1 prospectus.

Some, including Nvidia's Jensen Huang, say AI fears are overblown. But comments by some AI researchers that the technology could kill all humans along with a series of incidents of frontier models have gone rogue has spurred a flurry of defensive moves over the past few weeks.

OpenAI pledged to pause training of its "most capable" models. Anthropic pushed its IPO to November. And President Trump's hastily assembled AI summit at the White House Tuesday culminated in a commitment by business leaders to enact controls to avert disaster and submit to external audits to hold themselves accountable.

"Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations," the accord reads.

The companies could face enforcement action sooner if the FTC inquiry finds that Anthropic and OpenAI misled consumers.

The FTC, Anthropic, and OpenAI did not immediately respond to Barron's request for comment.