FTC chair suspicious of calls for AI antitrust exemptions

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday that "everyone should be deeply suspicious" about AI companies seeking antitrust exemptions while they also lobby for new regulations.

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said he was expressing his personal opinion, and did not directly name Anthropic, whose CEO last week called for antitrust permission to enable rivals to coordinate a slower pace to AI development amid safety concerns.

The comments are the first public indication of how the Trump administration views that pitch, and highlight how AI regulation is sometimes perceived as a tool large tech companies use to hamstring rivals.

Ferguson made the comments at an event at Georgetown University in Washington. He noted that President Donald Trump would set AI policy for the federal government.

"I will say generally, though, that if companies are simultaneously coming to Washington and asking for a host of regulations and an antitrust exemption, all of my alarm bells go off," he said.

"They're asking for barriers to entry that will insulate their incumbency from challenge. And I think if you combine that with the requested antitrust exemption, everyone should be deeply suspicious about this," he added.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for an intentional slowdown of AI development, and for an exemption to usual prohibitions on competitors working together. AI agents could become capable of shutting down the internet in as soon as six months, causing billions of dollars in damage, he said.