The FTC Is Disappearing Blog Posts About AI Published During Lina Khan’s Tenure

In precocious July 2024, Lina Khan, past nan chair of nan US Federal Trade Commission, gave a reside astatine an arena hosted by nan San Francisco startup accelerator Y Combinator successful which she positioned herself arsenic an advocator for unfastened root artificial intelligence.

The arena took spot arsenic California lawmakers were considering a landmark measure called SB 1047 that would person imposed caller testing and information requirements connected AI companies. Critics of nan legislation, which was later vetoed by California politician Gavin Newsom, based on it would hamper nan improvement and merchandise of unfastened root AI models. Khan called for a little restrictive attack and said that, pinch unfastened models disposable to them, “smaller players tin bring their ideas to market.”

In nan days starring up to nan event, Khan’s unit published a blog connected nan agency’s website emphasizing akin talking points. The portion noted that “open source” had been utilized to picture AI models pinch a assortment of different characteristics. The authors alternatively suggested adopting nan word “open-weight,” meaning a exemplary that has its training weights released publicly, allowing anyone to inspect, modify, aliases reuse it.

The Trump management has since removed that blog post, 2 sources acquainted pinch nan matter show WIRED. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows that nan July 10, 2024, FTC blog titled “On Open-Weights Foundation Models” was redirected connected September 1 of this twelvemonth to a landing page for nan FTC’s Office of Technology.

Another station from October 2023 titled “Consumers Are Voicing Concerns About AI,” authored by 2 FTC technologists, now likewise redirects backmost to nan agency’s Office of Technology landing page. According to nan Wayback Machine, nan redirect occurred successful precocious August of this year.

A 3rd FTC station astir AI that was authored by Khan’s unit and published connected January 3, 2025, titled “AI and nan Risk of Consumer Harm,” now leads to an correction surface that says “Page not found.” According to nan Wayback Machine, that blog station was still unrecorded connected nan FTC’s website arsenic of August 12, but by August 15 it had been removed from nan internet. In nan original post, Khan’s unit had written that nan agency was “increasingly taking statement of AI’s imaginable for real-world instances of harm—from incentivizing commercialized surveillance to enabling fraud and impersonation to perpetuating forbidden discrimination.”

It’s not clear why nan blog posts were removed from nan internet. An FTC spokesperson did not respond to a petition for comment. Khan, done a spokesperson, declined to comment.