Sam Altman Voices Support for Federal AI Guardrails During DC Visit

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with U.S. lawmakers Wednesday (July 29) and told reporters later that he supports federal artificial intelligence legislation, Bloomberg reported.

Altman said that he didn’t discuss specific legislative proposals but that he was “certainly” supportive of AI cybersecurity guardrail legislation, according to the report.

During the meetings, Altman also discussed OpenAI’s next AI model with lawmakers, the report said.

“We talked about our new model and what it’s going to take for America to remain excited about AI,” Altman told reporters, per the report.

Politico reported Wednesday that Altman declined to tell reporters what new capabilities OpenAI’s upcoming model may have.

Asked when or if the company planned to release the model, Altman said, per the report: “Not sure. That’s part of what we’re here to talk about.”

Altman did not commit to supporting mandatory vetting for frontier models but said it is important that the federal government be able to test frontier models that have new levels of capability, according to the report.

CNBC reported Wednesday that Altman said that while he is in Washington, D.C., he will meet this week with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Altman is meeting with a range of senior Trump administration officials, lawmakers and economists this week, according to the report.

There is an Aug. 1 deadline for federal agencies to develop a framework to carry out assessments of the capabilities of AI models that are voluntarily provided to them by AI companies. Those evaluations, and the deadline, are included in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in June, per the report.

PYMNTS reported that the June 2 executive order seeks access to new AI models for up to 30 days before their release and allows the government to choose “trusted partners that will have early access to covered frontier models to promote secure innovation and strengthen the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure.”

OpenAI said July 21 that a security incident reported a week earlier by Hugging Face was caused by OpenAI models as their cyber capabilities were being tested by OpenAI. The company described this as “an unprecedented cyber incident.”