FTC launches 'Operation AI Comply' enforcement sweep against deceptive AI claims

The Federal Trade Commission announced “Operation AI Comply,” a coordinated set of five enforcement actions against companies it said used AI, or claims about AI, to deceive consumers. The sweep targeted DoNotPay, marketed as “the world’s first robot lawyer,” along with Ascend Ecom, Ecommerce Empire Builders and FBA Machine, which the FTC said promised consumers guaranteed passive income from AI-powered online storefronts, and Rytr, an AI writing tool the agency said let subscribers mass-generate fake, detailed customer testimonials unrelated to their actual experience.

DoNotPay agreed to pay $193,000 and to notify affected subscribers, without admitting wrongdoing. The Rytr case was the sweep’s most contested: the complaint passed on a 3-2, party-line vote, with Republican commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Andrew Ferguson dissenting. Both argued the FTC’s unfairness authority was being stretched too far, since the complaint did not allege that any specific AI-generated review Rytr produced was itself false, only that the tool made fabrication easy — a theory they said risked treating a general-purpose writing tool’s misuse by customers as the company’s own deception.

Operation AI Comply was among the earliest instances of a US regulator treating AI-enabled fraud as enforceable under existing consumer-protection law rather than waiting for AI-specific statute, and the split vote previewed a partisan divide — over how aggressively to police AI tools versus their misuse by users — that shaped later FTC action, including the eventual reversal of the Rytr order.