The U.S. Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) has launched an investigation into the potential dangers posed by products from OpenAI , Anthropic , and other artificial intelligence companies, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to CNBC .

This investigation has intensified the scrutiny of security practices faced by OpenAI and Anthropic, especially after industry researchers warned that these companies' AI models could cause catastrophic harm. OpenAI shocked the industry in July when it was revealed that its agents had breached the testing environment and invaded the open-source platform Hugging Face.

FTC The spokesperson refused to disclose the names of other companies that are under investigation. The New York Post was the first to report on this investigation.

Representatives of OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comments.

Earlier this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei drew attention in the tech community when he called on AI companies to slow down the pace of developing the most advanced models and urged for stronger government regulation. He also proposed a three-step plan aimed at slowing down the development pace without "sacrificing commercial advantages or the United States' leading position in the field of AI."

Several competitors of Amodei, including the CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman and the CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk, expressed their support for his proposal; whereas others, including the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg and the CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang, believed that each company should be responsible for ensuring the security of its own products.

U.S. President Donald Trump convened executives from Alphabet, Meta, SpaceX, Nvidia, Palantir, Anthropic, OpenAI, and other companies on Tuesday to discuss this issue. The participants signed a brief voluntary agreement that stated: "Each company has the responsibility to develop its technology in a secure manner and in a way that can win the trust of customers and the public."

"We all need to work together to ensure that we can win, and we need to win safely," Amodei said outside the White House on Tuesday. "If we do what's right, if we cooperate with the president and everyone here, we can win safely."

Watch: OpenAI is more aggressive in its actions than Meta. Big Technology's Alex Kantrowitz discusses AI.