Apple joins White House voluntary AI safeguards program, joining 15 other major companies that agree to safety and transparency measures
Apple has signed on to the Joe Biden administration’s voluntary AI safeguards, which aim to ensure emerging technology is developed in a safe and secure manner. White House said.
Apple joins 15 other companies that have signed voluntary AI safeguards in the past year.
THE initial group of companies Signatories to the program in July 2023 included Amazon, Anthropic, Google, AI company Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, developer of the chatbot ChatGPT.
The administration said at the time that it had obtained “voluntary commitments from these companies to contribute to the safe, secure and transparent development of AI technology.”
Watermarks
The move comes amid ongoing concerns from experts, regulators and governments about the potential misuse of AI technologies in the years to come.
In September, eight other companies signed the pledges, including Adobe, IBM and AI accelerator chip maker Nvidia.
Companies that develop these emerging technologies have a responsibility to ensure the safety of their products, the White House said.
He said the commitments underline three principles that must be fundamental to the future of AI – safety, security and trust – and mark a crucial step towards the development of responsible AI.
Among the measures the companies agree on is the use of watermarks on AI-generated content such as text, images, audio and video, amid concerns that deepfake content could be used for fraud and other criminal purposes.
Companies also commit to conducting internal and external security testing before releasing their AI systems and to publicly reporting on the capabilities of their AI systems.
AI Safety
In October, the administration issued a far-reaching executive order on AI that, among other measures, required companies developing the most powerful models to regularly submit safety reports to the federal government.
The 111-page document builds on an AI “Bill of Rights” released in late 2022, which also sought to address some of the technology’s major potential downsides while also working to explore its benefits.
Last November, the UK hosted the first AI Safety Summit, which issued an international statement that “for the benefit of all, AI must be designed, developed, deployed and used in a safe, human-centered, trustworthy and responsible manner.”
Tens of thousands of Hollywood video game actors started a strike on Friday for fear that generative AI could be used to put them out of work.
