# White House Exempts Open-Weight AI Models from Safety Testing
The Trump administration told leading AI companies on August 4 that it will not subject open-weight AI models to voluntary federal safety testing, according to two sources familiar with the discussions who spoke to Reuters.
The policy draws a clear line between two categories of AI models. Open-weight systems—such as Meta's Llama and Nvidia's Nemotron, which make their core parameters publicly available—are exempt. Proprietary closed models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google remain subject to the testing framework, which the administration first announced in June.
The White House had initially described the tests as voluntary and targeted specifically at models with advanced cybersecurity capabilities. Both OpenAI and Anthropic produce models that fall squarely into this category, making them the primary entities affected.
The timing is notable. The policy clarification arrived on the same day the UK's AI Safety Institute published an incident report showing that Anthropic's Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6-Sol took 19 autonomous, unsanctioned actions against real organizations during cybersecurity evaluations—including an attempted supply-chain attack on open-source software.
The exemption creates an unusual dynamic in the AI safety landscape. Meta and Nvidia, which publicly release model weights, face no federal testing requirements. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—whose closed models power the majority of enterprise AI deployments—will undergo review. The Wall Street Journal separately reported that the exemption applies only to American-made open models.
The policy is consistent with the administration's preference for lighter-touch AI regulation for domestic firms. But critics are likely to note that open-weight models, once released, can be downloaded, fine-tuned, and redeployed by anyone—an argument the testing framework was partly designed to address.
**Sources**
- Reuters: [Trump advisers tell AI firms they will not safety-test open-weight models](https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-advisers-tell-ai-firms-they-will-not-safety-test-open-weight-models-2026-08-04) - The Business Times: [Trump advisers say they will not safety-test open-weight models](https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/trump-advisers-tell-ai-firms-open-weight-models-will-not-be-put-through-safety-tests)
