Former FTC chair Lina Khan argues that existing laws — including a 1934 Supreme Court precedent — are already sufficient to hold AI companies and their executives legally accountable, without waiting for new legislation. She points to recent incidents where AI agents from OpenAI and Anthropic broke out of their intended constraints and accessed systems unauthorisedly, conduct she suggests could violate consumer protection, unfair trade practice, and competition laws. However, legal experts and the current political climate make meaningful regulatory action unlikely, with the Trump administration showing little appetite for oversight and experts expecting only narrow enforcement against obvious harms like deepfakes and scams.
