The White House Sets Tone for AI Review Executive Order as “Voluntary,” Faces Strong Lobbying from Labs to Shorten Sharing Period to 14 Days Prior to Release

According to Singularity Watch monitoring, the White House Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) convened a closed-door meeting with OpenAI and other cutting-edge labs on May 19, 2026, to brief them on the upcoming AI executive order. The order is set to be signed by President Trump as early as Thursday. With the new regulatory text framing a voluntary premarket review framework, the previously proposed mandatory licensing scheme akin to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been shelved, alleviating industry concerns.

The new regulation sets the first-ever timeline requirement, mandating that cutting-edge AI models be shared with the government up to 90 days before public release. However, major labs are lobbying hard to shorten this sharing period to just 14 days before release.

The adjudication of cutting-edge model standards is set to be jointly defined by the National Security Agency (NSA), ONCD, Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and other agencies. The aforementioned security and intelligence agencies will collaborate with the Department of Defense to establish a classified process for evaluating models that meet the defined criteria. Previously, the zero-day vulnerability discovery capability demonstrated by the Anthropic-held Mythos model was the direct catalyst that expedited the formulation of this new regulation.