By Matthew Field

US tech giants including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, have pledged to promote transparency and safety around artificial intelligence (AI) in a deal with Joe Biden.

The White House said the “voluntary” pledge will ask technology companies to ensure rigorous testing before their AI chatbots are made available to the public, while also building systems that prevent AI-powered fraud.

The seven signatories include Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook-owner Meta, and OpenAI, which has fuelled a new AI arms race in the tech sector with its bot ChatGPT.

President Biden will meet on Friday with technology leaders, including Sir Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and Meta’s global affairs lead, at the White House for a “frank discussion” about AI’s dangers.

The key pledges include properly vetting AI systems before they are made public so they cannot be used to threaten mankind. Companies will also be required to include digital watermarks on AI-produced artworks or videos, to alert people when they are looking at synthetic posts.

There are fears deep fake images and videos could be utilised in the upcoming 2024 Presidential election. The Republican campaign of Ron DeSantis has already used synthetic images in attack adverts on his rivals, while the Republican party released a video using noticeably artificial images of President Biden.

“Companies that are developing these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure their products are safe,” the White House said on Friday.

Some leading AI researchers and executives, including billionaire Elon Musk, have called for a pause on the development of the most powerful machine-learning systems, although this week Meta’s Sir Nick claimed most of the current generation of algorithms were too “stupid” to be dangerous.

The White House said it was consulting with allies, including Britain, on how to make AI secure. The announcement comes ahead of an AI summit, which will be held in the UK later this year, to tackle making the new technology safe.