OpenAI CEO to Join G7 Leaders Summit on AI Safety

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman will attend the G7 conference in France from June 15-17 after an invitation from President Emmanuel Macron to participate in the Leaders Summit. The G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the EU. AI is expected to feature prominently on the agenda.

"The expectation is that he will be engaging in the leaders-level conversation at the G7," Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, said. Lehane said the main priority for Altman at the summit is youth safety. He added that AI has moved from a future-tense debate to a governing reality.

At the end of May, G7 digital ministers agreed on a joint approach to protecting children online. Other major focus areas for OpenAI include frontier AI risks, particularly around cyber and bio.

OpenAI is expecting a set of voluntary commitments to be reached by tech companies during the summit, Lehane said. Macron has recently been on a charm offensive with tech leaders. Over the weekend, SoftBank said it planned to invest 45 billion euros, equal to $53 billion, over the next five years to build AI infrastructure in France.

Macron personally courted SoftBank founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son, requested a meeting, and asked him to build a data center in France. Son said the two exchanged texts as they hashed out the details of the deal. Salesforce announced it would invest 2 billion euros in France.

OpenAI has positioned itself as a partner to governments through its OpenAI for Countries initiative, launched in 2025. The company said it would partner with countries to build out data center capacity and deploy ChatGPT to citizens. Former UK Chancellor George Osborne was announced in December to lead the program.

Google declined to comment on whether leadership executives would attend the G7. Anthropic told CNBC nothing had been confirmed on whether its chief executive Dario Amodei was planning on attending. The Élysée Palace has been approached for comment.