Microsoft President Brad Smith has weighed in on U.S. policy on AI, saying that the Trump administration’s current approach lacks transparency and does not provide the clear rules companies need.
Smith was speaking exclusively to Fortune on the sidelines of the AI for Good Global Summit.
“Everyone is reluctant to say there should be regulation, but what we really have right now is regulation without transparent or complete rules,” he said. “Without rules, businesses can’t plan.”
The Trump administration’s recent decisions to restrict access to two of the industry’s most advanced AI models has left even the labs building them guessing at what the government’s AI policy is.
Last month, the Commerce Department invoked export-control law to force Anthropic to pull its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models from the market worldwide, citing a cybersecurity risk. Weeks later, officials pressed OpenAI to hold back the public rollout of its new GPT-5.6 model family, limiting early access to government-vetted partners. Both restrictions have since eased: Fable 5 came back online earlier this month, and OpenAI said this week GPT-5.6 will launch publicly on Thursday.
