Xi Jinping used a White House meeting to tell Donald Trump that the US and China can keep talking about AI, and can work together to stop it from being misused.
Xi raised AI cooperation during talks with Trump at the White House on September 24, 2026, according to a readout from China's foreign ministry. He said the two countries can continue an existing dialogue on artificial intelligence and can jointly work to prevent its misuse and abuse. The ministry's account quotes Xi noting that "both China and the United States have strong AI capabilities," but the released material cuts off before describing what joint prevention would actually look like. No specific commitments, timelines, or enforcement mechanisms appear in what was published.
That vagueness is the story. Washington and Beijing have sparred for years over chip export controls, model safety rules, and who bears responsibility for AI-enabled disinformation and deepfakes. A one-line pledge to "jointly prevent misuse," relayed through a single government's own summary of a private meeting, is not a treaty, a working group, or even a shared definition of what misuse means.
Both sides have said warm things about AI dialogue before, at earlier leader-level meetings, and follow-through has been thin every time.