Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Friday, July 21st, and I'm your host, Kim Khan.

Our top story so far in today's session.

The White House said it received voluntary commitments from seven U.S. companies

for security testing of their AI systems before their release.

The companies are Amazon, Anthropic, Google Parent Alphabet, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and Open

AI.

They have committed to use digital water marking to help

differentiate between real and AI generated content like deepfakes. The

companies also pledged to methods for reporting vulnerabilities in their systems and to publicly report their

AI systems capabilities, limitations, and areas of appropriate and inappropriate use.

The Tech Giants have also committed to research on the societal risks that AI systems pose,

including avoiding bias and discrimination and protecting privacy.

Also today, Canada's top cybersecurity official said his agency has seen AI being used to craft fishing emails in a more focused way,

and also in malicious code and in misinformation and disinformation.

Sammy Cowrie of Canada's Center for Cybersecurity, did not provide details to Reuters,

but his assertions that cyber criminals have been using AI adds to the buzz surrounding the risks imposes.

Cowray noted that while the use of AI to draft malicious code was still in early stages,

the concern was that models are evolving so rapidly that it's difficult to get a grip on their potential

before they are released. Now a look at today's trading. Stocks are choppy

after a sharp sell-off in the previous session, while off opening highs and pre-market

action.

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