Trump and AI Leaders Sign Voluntary Accord to 'Self-Police' Development

President Trump said on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, that he and leaders of major AI companies had signed a voluntary accord at the White House, according to an Associated Press report published by Boston.com. Trump called the pact “morally binding.”

“I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump told reporters outside the West Wing, the AP reported.

Who signed

The AP said the accord was signed by Trump, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Elon Musk, founder of xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.

What the companies agreed to

Under the accord, the companies would adopt “robust internal controls,” partner with an “independent external auditor” to assess whether those controls work, and set up a committee within each company’s board of directors to review findings from internal and external audits. The accord also says the steps could eventually be written into law: “Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws and regulations.”

The AP noted that some of the actions in the accord are measures the companies were already taking in some form or had previously committed to. Trump also suggested that about 10 people would be named to a committee to “watch over the whole enterprise,” and said he would name someone to oversee the agreement after consulting with industry.

Skepticism

Some experts questioned relying on self-policing. Robin Jia, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, told the AP it is crucial that the labs’ intentions are “well-aligned with the broader interest of the American public,” pointing to recent hacking disclosures. Alex Pascal of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center said only robust legal liability and regulation would reduce the risks to Americans.

Amodei himself struck a note of caution at the event: “The technology has very real risks,” he said, adding that how to address them “is still under discussion.”

The backdrop

The accord followed weeks of agent incidents and debate. An AP analysis two days earlier had questioned whether the labs were trying to set the terms of their own oversight (read our report), and a federal antitrust suit had challenged the idea of rivals coordinating at all (read our report).

What came next

Trump said he would soon name someone to oversee AI. On October 4 he named Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as AI czar; see our report on the appointment.