The White House on Thursday told the CEOs of US AI giants that they have a "moral" responsibility to protect society from the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.

Vice President Kamala Harris had summoned the heads of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic to strategise about the impact of AI, afraid that companies are running blindly into technology that could pose serious harms to society.

Harris told the CEOs, including Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, that they have a "moral" duty to safeguard society from AI's potential dangers.

Companies "must comply with existing laws to protect the American people" as well as "ensure the safety and security of their products," Harris said in a statement after the talks.

US President Joe Biden has urged Congress to pass laws setting stricter limits on the tech sector, but these efforts have little chance of making headway given political divisions.

Harris said that she and Biden, who briefly dropped by the meeting, backed "advancing potential new regulations and supporting new legislation" when it comes to AI.

The lack of rules has given Silicon Valley freedom to put out new products rapidly, and stoked fears that AI technologies will wreak havoc on society before the government can catch up.

"It's good to try to get ahead of this. It's definitely going to be a challenge but it's one I think we can handle," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told reporters before the meeting.

His company, supercharged by billions of dollars from Microsoft, took the lead in making AI available to everyday consumers with the release of ChatGPT, which caused a global sensation five months ago.

Microsoft quickly integrated the AI chatbot's abilities to crank out natural-seeming written responses from short prompts into its Bing search engine and other products.

The Windows-maker on Thursday expanded public access to these generative artificial intelligence programs, despite criticism and the meeting at the White House.

Risks from AI include its potential uses in fraud, through voice clones, deep-fake videos and convincingly written messages.

It is also a threat to white-collar jobs – especially, for now, lower-skilled back-office work.

A range of experts in March urged a pause in the development of powerful AI systems to allow time to make sure they are safe, though a halt was widely seen as unlikely. (AFP)