Trump and major AI executives sign “morally binding” voluntary controls: “It’s almost like a constitution”

Updated on: September 29, 2026 / 4:53 PM EDT / CBS News

President Trump and the leaders of the country's largest artificial intelligence companies have signed a set of voluntary safety standards, the president and House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday, as calls mount for tighter guardrails on powerful AI technology.

"It's almost like a constitution, in a way," Mr. Trump said while flanked by SpaceX's Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, Google's Sundar Pichai and a throng of other tech executives.

Following a lunch meeting at the White House, Johnson said the group signed an accord on "super intelligence" — Mr. Trump's preferred term for AI. He described it as a "joint commitment" and "statement of principles" that will voluntarily hold the companies to "robust internal controls."

Asked if the deal was binding, Mr. Trump said: "I think it's morally binding."

"I think I'm seeing tremendous self-policing, and they understand that they have to self-police," the president later said.

It's not clear exactly how the accord will work. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told reporters the AI firms agreed to "multiple layers of auditing and controls," including internal evaluations and external…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/moneywatch/