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At the G7 Summit on Wednesday, world leaders like French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced concerns that the U.S. could cut off their countries\u2019 access to top American AI models at any time.<\/p>\n
Macron warned G7 leaders and top AI executives\u00a0\u2014 including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and President Donald Trump \u00a0\u2014 over lunch that if the U.S. \u201cfrom one day to the next can turn off the switch,\u201d it could not only harm the economies of European customers but also damage the AI firms themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The comments come a few days after the Trump administration blocked Anthropic from exporting its newest Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models on national security grounds. The order came after Amazon flagged to the White House that certain safety guardrails could be bypassed. Even though cybersecurity experts<\/a> have argued that the capabilities<\/a> cited by the government are also present in models that remain freely available, including from OpenAI,\u00a0Anthropic\u2019s models are still on ice.<\/p>\n The episode has exposed a risk that many international companies have been grappling with<\/a>: Any company or government that builds on U.S. AI infrastructure now has to reckon with the possibility that access can be revoked overnight, for reasons they may never be told.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Modi also said he was concerned about Trump\u2019s move to block Anthropic\u2019s model, according to reporting from Financial Times<\/a>, adding that democratic nations must have unfettered access to top AI models to protect critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cThe recent restriction on access to Anthropic\u2019s models confirms what we at Cohere have known all along: that companies and democratic nations remaining dependent on a small handful of big tech companies is dangerous to resilience,\u201d Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Canadian enterprise AI firm Cohere, said in a statement shared with TechCrunch. \u201cDigital sovereignty is not just about market competition or any one company or nation. It\u2019s about who controls the foundational technology that will shape our economic security and national sovereignty for decades to come.\u201d<\/p>\n During the meeting, G7 leaders also discussed the creation of a \u201ctrusted partners\u201d<\/a> scheme that would grant access for non-U.S. nations to advanced AI models from firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. The goal is to maintain a sort of open trade network that bypasses U.S. restrictions. Both countries and companies could be trusted partners, as long as they used the models to develop stronger defenses against rivals like China.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not clear how far that trusted partner scheme would extend, or whether it\u2019s an answer for a startup in Paris or Bangalore that just had its product break without warning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regardless, Macron noted that it would make sense for Washington to back such a scheme and to ensure Mythos access was granted more broadly. Nobody would want to buy U.S. AI access if it could disappear overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n The comments were made even as Europe and other non-U.S. countries attempt to push for AI sovereignty<\/a> \u2014 an increasingly difficult case to make when American models keep pulling ahead and nobody wants to be left out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n