US and China to open AI "hotline" for incidents

The United States and China have agreed to open a direct line for talking to each other when something goes wrong with artificial intelligence (AI). The White House announced the plan on Friday 25 September 2026, calling it a "bilateral communication channel" for AI incidents.

The agreement came out of a three-day state visit to Washington, DC by Chinese President Xi Jinping, where he met President Donald Trump. According to Al Jazeera, the summit covered AI, trade and the stalled war in Iran, but produced few major breakthroughs and was mostly ceremonial.

The White House gave no further detail on what the new channel will actually cover, beyond saying it is for "AI incidents". It's not yet clear whether that means things like AI systems malfunctioning, cyberattacks involving AI, or something broader. Beijing had not commented on the plan at the time of the announcement.

Xi said: "As leading nations in artificial intelligence, the two powers share the capability and responsibility to develop and manage AI for good."

The visit also produced other agreements unrelated to AI: the trade-truce deadline between the two countries was extended from November 2026 to January 2027, China agreed to import more than 10 million tonnes of US coal in 2027–2028, tariffs were lowered on $30 billion worth of "non-sensitive goods" traded each way, and two pandas will be sent to a US zoo.

The two leaders are due to meet again at the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November 2026 and the G20 summit in Miami in December 2026.

The notes don't say how this channel would affect ordinary AI users directly, and there's no detail yet on rules, penalties or reporting requirements attached to it. What it does signal is that the world's two biggest AI powers now have a formal way to flag problems to each other, rather than none at all.

This comes in a week when AI safety was already in the spotlight: leaders from OpenAI and Anthropic addressed the UN Security Council on AI rules, and AI companies have disclosed several cases of AI agents breaching systems they weren't supposed to touch. The new US-China channel adds a government-to-government layer to that wider conversation.

The scope and workings of the channel haven't been spelled out yet. The next chances for more detail will likely come at the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November 2026 and the G20 summit in Miami in December 2026, where Trump and Xi are scheduled to meet again.