The Biden administration says 7 AI companies will agree to the safeguards

Seven leading US artificial intelligence companies have agreed to voluntary guarantees for technology development, the White House announced Friday, pledging to strive for safety, security and trust even as they compete for artificial intelligence potential.

The seven companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — will formally announce their commitment to the new standards at a meeting with President Biden at the White House on Friday afternoon.

The announcement comes as companies race to outdo each other with versions of artificial intelligence that provide powerful new tools for creating text, images, music and video without human intervention. But technological leaps have raised fears that the tools will facilitate the spread of misinformation and dire warnings of “extinction risk” as self-aware computers develop.

On Wednesday, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, announced its AI tool called Llama 2 and said it would release the underlying code to the public. Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of global affairs, said in a statement that his company supports the safeguards put in place by the White House.

“We are delighted to be making these voluntary commitments alongside others in the sector,” said Mr. Clegg. “It is an important first step in ensuring responsible AI sandboxes are in place, and it also creates a model for other governments to follow.”

The voluntary safeguards announced Friday are just an early step as Washington and governments around the world put in place legal and regulatory frameworks for the development of artificial intelligence. White House officials said the administration is working on an executive order that goes beyond Friday’s announcement and supports the development of bipartisan legislation.

“The companies that develop these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their products,” the department said in a statement announcing the agreements. The statement said companies must “uphold the highest standards to ensure that innovation does not come at the expense of the rights and safety of Americans.”

As part of the agreement, the companies agreed to:

• Security testing of their AI products, in part by independent experts and sharing information about their products with governments and others trying to manage technology risks.

• Ensure that consumers are able to discover AI-generated material by applying watermarks or other means to identify generated content.

• Publicly report the capabilities and limitations of their systems on a regular basis, including security risks and evidence of bias.

• Deploy advanced AI tools to address society’s biggest challenges, such as curing cancer and combating climate change.

• Conduct research on the risks of bias, discrimination, and invasion of privacy from the proliferation of AI tools.

“AI’s track record shows the insidiousness and pervasiveness of these risks, and companies are committed to launching AI that mitigate them,” said the Biden administration’s statement Friday before the meeting.

The agreement is unlikely to slow efforts to pass legislation and impose regulations on the emerging technology. Lawmakers in Washington are racing to keep up with the rapid developments in artificial intelligence. Other governments are doing the same.

The European Union moved quickly last month to consider the most far-reaching effort to regulate technology. Proposed legislation by the European Parliament would place severe limits on some uses of AI, including facial recognition, and would require companies to disclose more data about their products.