FTC Chair Lina Khan expresses skepticism toward industry calls for antitrust exemptions in AI regulation, signaling enforcement will not carve out the AI sector.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson warned on Tuesday that companies seeking antitrust exemptions while simultaneously lobbying for new regulations should be viewed with suspicion.

Speaking at an event at Georgetown University in Washington, Ferguson offered his personal view without directly naming Anthropic, whose CEO Dario Amodei last week called for an antitrust exemption to allow competitors to coordinate a slower pace of AI development amid safety concerns.

"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," Ferguson 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."

Ferguson's comments represent the first public indication of how the Trump administration views such proposals and highlight how AI regulation is sometimes perceived as a tool large tech companies use to hamstring rivals. The FTC chairman noted that President Donald Trump would set AI policy for the federal government.

Amodei has called for an intentional slowdown of AI development and for an exemption to usual prohibitions on competitors working together. He warned that AI agents could become capable of shutting down the internet in as little as six months, potentially causing billions of dollars in damage.