President Donald Trump signed a voluntary artificial intelligence safety accord on September 30, joined at the White House by the leaders of the world's biggest AI companies.

The chief executives of Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Nvidia and xAI — Dario Amodei, Sundar Pichai, Mark Zuckerberg, Greg Brockman, Jensen Huang and Elon Musk — signed alongside the president.

The accord commits the companies to four steps: internal safety controls on AI models, internal oversight structures, an independent external auditor, and a dedicated board committee on AI safety.

The agreement is voluntary, meaning it carries no legal penalties for non-compliance. The White House framed it as a first step toward responsible AI development.

The signing comes amid a global debate over how to regulate powerful AI systems. Governments in Europe and Asia have moved toward binding rules, while the US has so far favoured industry-led approaches.

Critics argue that voluntary pledges lack teeth. Supporters say the accord creates a common baseline that companies can be held to publicly.

Whether the commitments translate into real changes in how frontier AI models are tested and deployed remains to be seen.