By Hamza Faisal
Six governments and ten of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies signed a joint declaration on AI safety and security in Paris on Monday, November 9, 2026, pledging shared evaluation standards, independent oversight and fail-safe controls for the most powerful AI models. The "Paris Call for AI safety and security" was published by the Élysée Palace and the Canadian Prime Minister's Office, and the statement remains open to new endorsements.
The six governments are Bahrain, Canada, Finland, France, Norway and the Netherlands. The ten companies are Anthropic, Black Forest Labs, Cohere, Domyn, Hugging Face, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Sakana AI and Synthesia. Four civil society groups also signed: LawZero, led by AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, SaferAI, AI Safety Connect and Ifri.
Shared tests for frontier models
The first of three commitments is a common framework for evaluating and managing the risks of frontier models, built on existing frameworks and supported by common technical standards, evaluation tools and methods that keep pace with advances in model capability. The focus is on dangerous misuse, including in the cyber and chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear domains, and on risks from growing model autonomy or misalignment, including loss of control.
Signatories agreed to publish the non-sensitive findings of their evaluations in a standardised format and to build a publicly accessible shared repository covering red-teaming protocols, benchmarking tools, risk assessments and stress-test results. Technical cooperation will draw on existing networks, including the International Network for Advanced AI Measurement, Evaluation and Science, known as NAAIMES.
Kill switches and independent checks
The second commitment covers responsibility and accountability across the AI ecosystem. Developers pledged to disclose their models' capabilities, limitations and known risks, to support evaluation by qualified independent evaluators where appropriate, and to build in fail-safe mechanisms that can shut down model operations within their control, including during training and internal use.
The declaration also acknowledges the risk that safety measures can be removed or bypassed, and says that risk must be addressed while preserving the benefits of open-weight development for research, innovation and safety. Companies committed to internal governance that mandates continuous risk management, real-time monitoring of emerging capabilities, rigorous internal red-teaming and reporting lines that protect internal researchers.
Early warnings and whistleblower protection
The third commitment is information sharing, reporting and early warning. Signatories pledged to deploy rapid alert systems built on existing incident-response arrangements, to align on how incidents are classified, and to share timely information on serious cyber and AI control incidents and other early signals of serious harm.
Policymakers also committed to offer secure and confidential channels through which whistleblowers, including employees, can raise concerns about systemic risks without fear of legal or professional retaliation.
The declaration builds on the Hiroshima process, the Frontier Safety Commitments agreed at the Seoul AI Summit, the G7 Evian AI meeting, the United Nations Security Council meeting on AI held on September 23, 2026, and the "Call for Control of Frontier AI Models". It lands in a week when regulators are pressing for harder evidence: Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said on Monday that AI models need more extensive testing before and after release, alongside better incident reporting. The United States, the United Kingdom and China are not among the signatories, and the statement remains open to new endorsements.
