Federal and state regulators can hold artificial intelligence companies and their executives legally responsible for deploying defective products using statutes already on the books. Former FTC Chair Lina Khan stated that releasing unvetted AI models can violate consumer protection laws, while shipping flawed tools without detection measures for rogue agents may constitute an "unfair or deceptive" practice under the FTC Act. Some state attorneys general are exploring criminal liability for CEOs when their models participate in criminal activity.

Existing laws also prohibit unfair methods of competition, including the appropriation of sensitive customer information through tool tracking. Khan noted that the interconnected structure of the market could create conflicts of interest, citing Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face as a potential barrier to lawsuits against OpenAI. A recent analysis showed about 1/3 of Fortune 100 companies lack a way to be notified of security issues, a failure Khan argued can result in legal violations for poor data security.