International regulation of AI, particularly its application to the military sphere and nuclear weapons, needs to be negotiated and agreed.  

In August 2025, a United Nations Secretary-General report recommended the “establishment of a dedicated and inclusive process to comprehensively tackle the issue of AI in the military domain and its implications for international peace and security.” This was followed by a UN General Assembly resolution mandating a three-day meeting in Geneva in 2026 for informal exchanges on the report. 

Also at the UN General Assembly in 2025, Mexico introduced a new resolution entitled “Possible risks of the integration of artificial intelligence into command, control and communications systems of nuclear weapons” calling for the issue to be addressed urgently. While it was not supported by any of the nuclear-armed countries, it did put the issue on the General Assembly’s agenda with a recorded vote of 118 in favour to 9 against (Argentina, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, France, Israel, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and the United States), with 44 abstentions.

In July 2023, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, called for a legally binding treaty to ban "lethal autonomous weapons systems". One of his main worries, he told the UN Security Council, is the use of AI in connection with nuclear weapons: "I urge agreement on the general principle that human agency and control are essential for nuclear weapons and should never be withdrawn".

There are processes underway including several leading states, such as the AI Safety Summits and the Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) summits. Nuclear weapons should be a key discussion area in these processes.  

France, the UK and The United States have all declared that they would never allow AI to control decision-making on the use of nuclear weapons. 

The US  and China have also started a dialogue on the need to ensure human decision-making remains central to nuclear weapons protocols, although as yet no substantive agreement has emerged 

However, a fully international process is also needed.  A treaty banning autonomous weapons systems is necessary, but, in the case of nuclear weapons, a treaty already exists which prohibits the weapons comprehensively. With weapons of mass destruction, trying to anticipate, mitigate or regulate the additional risks posed by emerging technologies will never be enough. We have to remove nuclear weapons from the equation entirely.   The only way to eliminate all these risks is to eliminate nuclear weapons. 

[Last revised February 2026]