Google, Microsoft, and more commit to AI safety at White House, Apple absent

Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a variety of other companies have rushed to push out their own AI-powered products. Over the months since then, we’ve seen the good and bad of what AI can be capable of. To help rein in the bad, several industry leaders have made a commitment to safer AI development, but one leader was notably missing.

Today, it was announced that seven leading AI companies convened at the White House to pledge their voluntary commitment to the safe, secure, and transparent development of AI technology. These companies included Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

One of the commitments that could have the biggest impact is the agreement to watermark AI-generated content. Watermarks would make it much easier to identify when AI created something. “This action enables creativity with AI to flourish but reduces the dangers of fraud and deception,” says the White House. Such a step could help prevent confusion from deep fakes such as the Pope puffer jacket photo or the AI voice-generating software currently being used to scam people out of money.

Another commitment the group agreed to is sharing AI risk management information across the industry and with governments, civil society, and academia. Additionally, they committed to reporting their AI systems’s capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use. According to the White House, the report would cover “both security risks and societal risks, such as the effects on fairness and bias.” There’s a full list of the other commitments that you can view in the press release.

Noticeably missing from the group was Apple. In the last few days, it was revealed that Apple is working on its own ChatGPT competitor called “Apple GPT.” Although this was just a voluntary commitment, Apple’s choice to skip this meeting calls into question where it stands on AI safety. As development of AI continues at a breakneck pace, and the dangers of it become more real, Apple’s absence today was loud.