New York City Council subpoenas Meta, Google, Anthropic, OpenAI executives over autonomous AI risks
On October 6, the New York City Council held a hearing on autonomous AI agent risks, questioning Meta, Google, Anthropic and OpenAI executives and setting a mid-October deadline that failure to appear will trigger formal subpoenas.
On October 6, the New York City Council held a hearing on the potential risks of autonomous AI agents to city cybersecurity and public services, summoning executives from Meta, Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. Council members expressed dissatisfaction with the four companies' lack of clear answers on agent oversight, safety accountability and daily operational guarantees, and set a mid-October deadline.
If the executives fail to appear on schedule, the Council will issue formal subpoenas. State and municipal lawmakers are running out of patience with voluntary AI industry pledges that lack measurable, enforceable detail, and increasingly want concrete rules alongside them.
The hearing echoes the FTC's late-September Section 5 investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic and METR. Regulatory posture is moving from industry self-regulation and guidance papers toward formal inquiries and subpoenas. For the companies, city-level scrutiny does not itself establish new rules, but it significantly raises the political and public pressure around agent safety and accountability, forcing companies to translate abstract commitments into measurable compliance metrics.