FTC Needs to Probe OpenAI and Halt GPT-4, Nonprofit Says

A nonprofit group is calling on the Federal Trade Commission to bar OpenAI from offering GPT-4 until the company can install safeguards around the AI program. 

The Center for AI and Digital Policy today filed a complaint(Opens in a new window) with the FTC that accuses OpenAI of not doing enough to prevent ChatGPT from being abused or causing mayhem.  

“The Federal Trade Commission has declared(Opens in a new window) that the use of AI should be ‘transparent, explainable, fair, and empirically sound while fostering accountability.’ OpenAI’s product GPT-4 satisfies none of these requirements. It is time for the FTC to act,” the group says.

The nonprofit cites the FTC’s own past statements—which demand that companies responsibly commercialize and market their AI technologies—as grounds for an investigation into OpenAI. Just last week, the commission published a blog post(Opens in a new window), warning companies against ignoring the risks from AI chatbot technologies. 

“Merely warning your customers about misuse or telling them to make disclosures is hardly sufficient to deter bad actors,” the FTC wrote. “Your deterrence measures should be durable, built-in features and not bug corrections or optional features that third parties can undermine via modification or removal.”

The nonprofit argues OpenAI has been offering GPT-4, the company’s latest large language model, without proper safeguards in place, thus warranting the FTC’s scrutiny. The group points to OpenAI’s own documentation(Opens in a new window) about GPT-4, which notes the technology poses several safety risks. This could include helping bad actors pump out disinformation, creating malware attacks, along with the AI itself proliferating misinformation to the public. 

Although OpenAI says it developed mitigations to prevent such abuse, the Center for AI and Digital Policy says the company deserves federal oversight. “We are specifically asking the FTC to determine whether the company has complied with the guidance the federal agency has issued,” says the nonprofit’s president, Marc Rotenberg.

“We recognize the opportunities and we support research,” adds Merve Hickok, a research director at the nonprofit. “But without the necessary safeguards established to limit bias and deception, there is a serious risk to businesses, consumers, and public safety.”

OpenAI and the FTC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The complaint comes a day after hundreds of computer scientists and tech entrepreneurs, including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, signed an open letter urging all AI labs to temporarily halt their research for at least six months. According to them, society and elected leaders need time to weigh the potential disruptive impacts from the technology before companies plunge further into the AI race.