Our 2024 report and ongoing work

Updating AI Principles

Since we first published our AI Principles in 2018, the technology has evolved rapidly. Billions of people are using AI in their everyday lives. AI has become a general-purpose technology, and a platform which countless organizations and individuals use to build applications. It has moved from a niche research topic in the lab to a technology that is becoming as pervasive as mobile phones and the internet itself; one with numerous beneficial uses for society and people around the world, supported by a vibrant AI ecosystem of developers.

Common baseline principles are an important part of this evolution. In addition to AI companies and academic institutions, we’re encouraged by the progress we’ve seen on AI principles globally. The G7 and the International Organization for Standardization, as well as individual democratic nations, have all published frameworks to guide the safe development and use of AI. Increasingly, organizations and governments are able to look to these common standards as they consider how best to build, regulate, and deploy this evolving technology — our Responsible AI Progress Report, for example, is now based on the United States’ NIST Risk Management Framework. Our experience and research over recent years, along with threat intelligence, expertise, and best practices we’ve shared with other AI companies, have deepened our understanding of AI’s potential and risks.

There’s a global competition taking place for AI leadership within an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape. We believe democracies should lead in AI development, guided by core values like freedom, equality, and respect for human rights. And we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security.

With that backdrop, we’re updating our own AI Principles to focus on three core tenets:

• Bold Innovation: We develop AI to assist, empower, and inspire people in almost every field of human endeavor, drive economic progress and improve lives, enable scientific breakthroughs, and help address humanity’s biggest challenges.
• Responsible Development and Deployment: Because we understand that AI, as a still-emerging transformative technology, poses new complexities and risks, we consider it an imperative to pursue AI responsibly throughout the development and deployment lifecycle — from design to testing to deployment to iteration — learning as AI advances and uses evolve.
• Collaborative Progress, Together: We learn from others, and build technology that empowers others to harness AI positively.

You can read our full AI Principles on AI.google.

Guided by our AI Principles, we will continue to focus on AI research and applications that align with our mission, our scientific focus, and our areas of expertise, and stay consistent with widely accepted principles of international law and human rights — always evaluating specific work by carefully assessing whether the benefits substantially outweigh potential risks. We’ll also take into account whether our engagements require bespoke research and development or rely on general purpose, widely-available technology. These assessments are particularly important as AI is increasingly being developed by numerous organizations and governments for uses in fields like healthcare, science, robotics, cybersecurity, transportation, national security, energy, climate, and more.

Of course, in addition to the Principles, we continue to have specific product policies and clear terms of use that contain prohibitions like illegal use of our services.