President Joe Biden emphasized the importance of safety in artificial intelligence products during a meeting with CEOs of major AI companies such as Microsoft and Google on Thursday. The two-hour meeting began at 11:45 am ET (1545 GMT) and included Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft Corp’s Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and administration officials including Biden’s Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Director of the National Economic Council Lael Brainard and Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. The growing popularity of generative AI, exemplified by ChatGPT and similar apps, has spurred companies to launch their own versions that they believe will revolutionize various industries. However, with millions of users already utilizing these tools for tasks such as medical diagnoses, writing screenplays, and debugging software, concerns have arisen over privacy violations, biased employment decisions, and the potential for scams and misinformation campaigns. President Biden, who has used ChatGPT himself, urged the officials to prioritize mitigating the current and potential risks AI poses to individuals, society, and national security. The White House highlighted the importance of AI companies ensuring the safety of their products before deployment.