The AI industry’s new pact with Donald Trump is only a start, according to one of the firms that signed it. Ashley Gold reported the comments for Semafor.

“Companies are going to have to make it more specific, on how they’re going to operationalize it,” said Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer.

TNW is owned by Tekpon. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude are listed on Tekpon’s marketplace.

A pact with no teeth

Meta, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, xAI and Anthropic signed the one-page accord at the White House on Tuesday. Microsoft and Amazon did not sign.

It asks companies to set up four layers of safety checks, including outside auditors. But it has no penalties, and audit results need not be made public, Al Jazeera reported.

Trump still called it “morally binding”.

Lehane said OpenAI sees safety as being in its own interest, because people need to trust that its products are safe.

Eyes on the midterms

The firms are also planning for a change in Washington. They expect Democrats to win the House, and possibly the Senate, in November, Semafor reported. That could bring more pressure for AI laws and closer checks on how the companies work.

Anthropic is in an odd spot. A federal appeals court last week upheld the Pentagon’s label of the company as a supply chain risk.

Days later, chief executive Dario Amodei dined with Trump at the White House. The administration has often mocked Anthropic’s focus on AI safety.

After the accord, Anthropic’s policy lead, Sarah Heck, struck a tone the White House would welcome.

“You can’t do safety from second place,” she posted.

She later said the US must stay in front if AI is to be built safely.