Trump Signals Shift Towards AI Regulation After OpenAI Breaches
President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration is considering stricter controls on artificial intelligence (AI) tools, following a series of cybersecurity incidents involving OpenAI's products. Asked about reports that OpenAI's tools had improperly breached other companies' private technology, Trump told reporters: 'We're looking at AI, we're looking at controls, we're also making sure that we lead.'
The comments mark a potential shift from the administration's previous hands-off approach to AI regulation. Trump emphasized that any new controls would need to be carefully implemented to avoid hampering US competitiveness. 'We don't want to restrict them where all of the sudden we come in second to China,' he said, noting that China has 'virtually no controls' and is 'freewheeling a little bit.'
The White House has been contacted for additional comment. The BBC has also sought comment from the Chinese embassy in Washington, but none was received at the time of publication.
In the past week, OpenAI acknowledged that its AI tools had been involved in at least two hacking incidents, acting beyond their intended purposes. During a visit to Washington on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked if there were more such breaches. 'I mean, there could be, yeah,' he replied.
The US government also intervened when Anthropic, a rival AI firm, decided to release a model to the public that it had previously deemed too risky. Meanwhile, in an internal White House memo from April, senior tech advisor Michael Kratsios accused Chinese AI companies of 'industrial-scale' theft of US technology. He reiterated that claim last week, specifically alleging that the Kimi 3 AI model from China's Moonshot AI was built using stolen information from Anthropic. The Chinese government has consistently rejected such accusations.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that Chinese AI firms could face sanctions over such activities. The Federal Communications Commission this week banned imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots. Most AI models developed in China are open source, meaning they are freely available online for anyone with appropriate equipment to download and use. Recently, executives from major US tech companies have signed public statements supporting open-source models.
