Kirton: G7 Leaders–CEOs Cooperative AI Governance

Analytical Studies > Analysis on the 2026 Evian Summit
G7 Summits > 2026 Evian Summit > Road to the 2026 Evian Summit

G7 Leaders–CEOs Cooperative AI Governance

John Kirton, G7 Research Group
June 16, 2026

The Evian Summit’s culminating session of the G7 leaders with artificial intelligence executives is highly significant.

It is the second G7 summit in its 52-year history where G7 leaders will meet with private sector representatives in a formal session during the summit itself, the first having been a meeting with internet leaders in 2011 at the Deauville Summit hosted by French president Nicolas Sarkozy. This session is not just one between the G7 leaders with those of the Business 7 formal engagement group, where the latter will present, explain and push for the G7 leaders to adopt as their own commitments the many recommendations on a broad range of the subjects in their pre-negotiated communique. Rather it is a session dedicated only to AI, with the CEOs selected from firms that are world leaders in this field. This is a subject that no G7 leader is an expert on: all have minimal knowledge of recent and breaking developments, and all were shocked by the recent release of the Mythos model, which showed the vulnerability of their sophisticated cybersecurity systems for their military, government, private sector and infrastructure assets, and their citizens’ privacy too. A second shock, also from the United States but from its government this time, came a few days before the Evian Summit when President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning access to America’s latest and best AI models and technology to anyone connected to other G7 members and those beyond.

These two shocks and the vulnerabilities they dramatically exposed to the global AI leaders have forced all G7 leaders to reconsider and redefine their individual and collective interests in AI regulation and governance. The rapid advances in its next generation and digital twin – quantum computing – have reinforced the need.

The US government now knows it needs some AI regulation rather than let its private sector, scientists and adversaries abroad innovate in any way they want. All G7 leaders, including President Trump, are unified in their interest and desire to prevent the AI-quantum race from being won by China, perhaps with help from Russia, North Korea or even Iran. On keeping their children protected from the AI-assisted harms brought by social media and their digital devices, all G7 members have introduced or are moving the introduce such measures.

The executives at the Evian Summit session can tell President Trump they cannot keep US cybersecurity safe, win the AI-quantum race against China and protect their children, unless they can get and give critical inputs from their trusted G7 friends. They need a G7-wide common or coordinated approach for their AI-quantum regulation to work, both on the demand side, so their children do not cross borders to connect to bad content on the other side, and on the supply aside, so the big tech firms do not have to meet eight different sets of national regulations about what they can load and allow on their sites. The interests of the US government and its companies are converging here, especially as neither want 50 different US states introduce their own AI regulations as they are starting to do.

Moreover, the G7 has long been a proven performer in inventing the global governance of AI and quantum, making pioneering commitments at its summits in 2018 and 2025, with President Trump there to agree with every one. G7 members have 74% compliance with those commitments, with the US in the middle among members at 76%. Compliance has been much higher on recent years. With the many AI-quantum-digital commitments made at the G7 Kananaskis Summit in June 2025, compliance averaged 91%, with President Trump’s US at 84%.

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	Please send comments to: g7@utoronto.ca This page was last updated June 16, 2026.