White House Ai Vetting Plan To Exempt Lower-cost ‘open’ Models

The White House framework for vetting the cybersecurity risks of advanced artificial intelligence models would focus on the top-tier products from U.S. developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic — while exempting a rising breed of lower-cost AI software, three people familiar with the policy told POLITICO.

Specifically, the vetting policy would not apply to so-called open-source or open-weight models, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to disclose details from private conversations. Open models have lately seen a surge of activity and interest across the tech industry, including from AI developers in China, despite not yet offering the same advanced capabilities of the top U.S. models.

The new details, provided after the White House met with staffers from top tech companies Tuesday to review the framework, offer the latest glimpse into the Trump administration’s efforts to tackle two daunting goals — ensuring that the AI industry’s ever-more-powerful products don’t create unsustainable security risks, without imposing such heavy regulations that the U.S. loses the tech race to Beijing.

The framework, which the White House has yet to make public, follows a June 2 executive order aiming to address AI’s catastrophic risks.

Only “state-of-the-art” models deemed to be national security risks would be covered by the policy, two of the people said. The executive order calls for a benchmarking process overseen by multiple agencies, including the National Security Agency, to determine which models would qualify.

Further details about precisely which advanced models or AI companies would be subject to the policy were not immediately available.

The document would also set a 30-day maximum period for the government’s review of new models, according to the people, adding that the evaluation process is expected to involve a wide swath of federal employees.

“The voluntary framework advances the Trump Administration’s America First cybersecurity strategy by strengthening our national security and cementing American AI dominance,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston previously said in a statement. “Companies that choose to collaborate with the Administration through this framework are putting American innovation, security, and cyber defense first.”

Open-weight models, which are customizable and whose core components are publicly released, have received widespread industry backing, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang making the rounds on Capitol Hill last week to advocate against possible restrictions.

As the White House grapples with its approach to risky AI models, some skeptics have expressed concern that new safety restrictions could give Chinese companies an edge and threaten U.S. supremacy in the race toward advanced AI.

Powerful AI models have made headlines with a string of cyber breaches that the companies say were made possible by the technology’s rapidly advancing capabilities. In some cases, the software companies said their models deliberately broke out of an attempt to contain them or otherwise behaved in ways that the AI developers had not predicted.

Katherine Long contributed to this report.