Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, AI NEWS: FTC’s Ferguson says AI apps must keep promises to consumers, (Aug 18, 2026)

By Lynn Stanton

Asked in the mostly AI-focused “fireside chat” session whether the FTC “needs” Democrats, Ferguson said that it is “the president’s prerogative to add commissioners.”

When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson said that he is concerned about companies making false promises to consumers about their AI applications and about antitrust violations in the supply chains that support AI. Speaking during a “fireside chat” session at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum in Aspen, Colorado, Chairman Ferguson said that he is not concerned about potential illegal uses of AI applications. Instead, he said, “When you make a promise to consumers, that has to be honest.”

Asked whether five major AI models would be enough to ensure a competitive market, Mr. Ferguson said, “I don’t want to predict the future.” However, he added that “it seems to get easier and easier “to build competitive LLMs, or large language models.

He emphasized the difficulty in keeping up with the competitive issues facing AI developers. In the weeks leading up to President Trump’s second inauguration, he was meeting with developers and kept hearing concerns about “this hyperscaler switching problem,” in which hyperscalers demanded “exorbitant fees” to release stored data to move to another hyperscaler. However, “a few months later they were saying ‘no, that’s not a problem anymore,” the FTC Chairman said.

He said that the FTC would focus on “ordinary industrial organization” in the areas that make AI possible, such as computer chips, that is, “the type of thing we’ve seen before,” rather than trying to address competitive issues that might quickly disappear in a field developing so quickly.

Asked about AI-assisted scams, such as AI impersonating the voices of people known to the target, Chairman Ferguson noted that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and telecom companies are working to make sure that consumers can see where a call is really coming from.

As for scams and fraud showing up on social media platforms, he said that the FTC has worked with platforms to fix the problem, but it persists, so the FTC may have to step in. He noted that “civil action is the tool I have,” so social media platforms may be seeing the FTC in court.

Mr. Ferguson criticized district courts during the first 18 months of the second Trump administration for repeatedly “overriding legitimate policy decisions” by the administration and “acting as a superlegislature.” He said what “we consistently had to run to the Supreme Court to get it to use its emergency powers” to override lower courts.

Asked whether the FTC “needs” Democrats, he said that it is “the president’s prerogative to add commissioners.” He added, “I’ll take our win-loss record” during the agency’s current Republican roster. “The FTC wins cases because it’s led by litigators,” he added.

News: ConsumerProtection AINews FederalTradeCommissionNews