The three heaviest-hitting frontier AI labs in the United States have spent since July quietly building a standards body that would regulate itself before Washington does it for them.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, proposed on July 14 the creation of a U.S.-based Frontier AI Standards Body, modeled on FINRA (the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority). FINRA isn't a government agency — it's an industry-funded self-regulatory organization that banks and brokerages answer to, with the power to write rules, examine its members, and refer violations to the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission).
Since then, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have held working-group meetings with the stated goal of creating an industry-funded entity with federal oversight, capable of reviewing models up to 30 days before public launch.
The three labs don't agree on how much weight the government should carry. Anthropic leans more toward a direct partnership with the federal government, while OpenAI emphasizes voluntary industry standards, though it backs certain specific state laws. According to internal reports, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees he supports creating a testing and auditing body, but believes the major labs will have to build it themselves if U.S. government backing doesn't materialize.
Not all of the industry is on board with this path. Meta, xAI, and NVIDIA came out openly against government-led regulation at Dreamforce on September 15 — barely a week before details of the OpenAI-Anthropic-Google DeepMind talks leaked.
Carlos Montiel is an enterprise AI solutions architect. He implements LLMs, Agents, RAG, and orchestrators for companies across Guatemala and Latin America. Reach out for a consultation.
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