After a two-hour lunch with Silicon Valley’s AI bosses on Tuesday, Donald Trump emerged from the White House touting a voluntary “accord” between six leading companies to “self-regulate” the technology, which has recently been responsible for a series of alarming hacks. The president told reporters that the two-page document — drafted on the fly in the East Room and containing a spelling error — was “almost like a constitution”, and claimed it amounted to “a form of protection” against the risks posed by AI.

The agreement is a far cry from the guardrails that AI executives such as Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have called for, or the global governance of the industry that world leaders had hoped for. The voluntary agreement briefly outlines “layers of controls and audits” that the six signatories — Anthropic, Open AI, Google, Meta, x AI and Nvidia — should implement, including robust internal controls and partnership with an independent external auditor.

Leading labs already run capability assessments, and all except Nvidia signed on to similar commitments after the 2024 AI summit in Seoul. “It is most significant on a vibes level,” said Mackenzie Arnold, managing director of US Law & Policy at Law AI. The document is not legally binding, but some lawyers believe it leaves the door open to a subsequent legal challenge by regulators if signatories fall foul of their own commitments.

The FTC on Wednesday widened an existing investigation into AI companies, probing Anthropic, Open AI and other labs over the risks their tech poses. Safety advocates hope the accord may lead to more concrete regulation.