Europe will cut back on regulation to make it easier for artificial intelligence to flourish in the region, French President Emmanuel Macron told an AI summit in Paris on Monday, urging investment in the EU – and more specifically in France. The European Union’s digital chief Henna Virkkunen also promised that the bloc will simplify its rules and implement them in a business-friendly way. As U.S. President Donald Trump has torn up his predecessor’s AI guardrails to boost U.S. competitiveness, pressure has built on the EU to pursue a lighter-touch approach to AI regulation to help keep European companies in the tech race.
“We will simplify,” Macron said. “It’s very clear we have to resynchronise with the rest of the world.”
Using the example of the gothic Notre-Dame cathedral, which was rebuilt in record time after a devastating fire, thanks to special, simplified regulation, Macron said: “The Notre-Dame approach will be adopted for data centres, for authorisation to go to the market, for AI and attractiveness.” After his speech, the Grand Palais venue hosting the summit switched to a nightclub atmosphere with a DJ playing music and the words “let’s innovate” and “free yourself” booming from the sound system, while spotlights swirled from a balcony.
Trump’s early moves on AI have underscored how far the strategies to regulate AI in the United States, China and EU have diverged.
And many at the two-day summit that started on Monday pushed the EU to soften its own rulebook.
“Europe’s productivity is dependent on using this emerging technology,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said.
Pichai called for ecosystems of AI innovation and adoption like one he said was growing in France. “How do we create more of these pockets in more places?”
In an interview with Reuters, Virkkunen, a European Commissioner, said she had gotten the message.
“I agree with industries on the fact that now, we also have to look at our rules, that we have too much overlapping regulation,” she said.
“We will cut red tape and the administrative burden from our industries,” she said.
European lawmakers last year approved the bloc’s AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology.
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Meanwhile, France hopes that world leaders at the summit will agree to a joint, non-binding text that says the AI revolution should be inclusive and sustainable.
But it was unclear whether the United States would be supportive. U.S. Vice President JD Vance could spell out the United States’ views when he gives a speech at the summit on Tuesday. Macron announced private sector investments in AI in France totaling some 109 billion euros ($113 billion). That will include French startup Mistral’s announced opening of a data centre in the wider Paris region.
Clem Delangue, the CEO of Hugging Face, a U.S. company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI online, said the size of the announced investments in France “has reassured us … that there’s going to be ambitious enough projects in France.”
Separately, one early outcome from the summit was the launch of Current AI, a partnership of countries such as France and Germany and industry players including Google and Salesforce.
With an initial $400 million in investment, the partnership will spearhead public-interest projects such as making high-quality data for AI available and investing in open-source tools. It is aiming for up to $2.5 billion in capital over five years.
Current AI founder Martin Tisné told Reuters a public-interest focus was necessary to avoid AI having downsides like social media has had. “We have to have learned the lessons,” he said.
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Not everyone in Paris agreed with taking a lighter-touch approach to AI regulation.
“What I worry about is that… there will be pressures from the U.S. and elsewhere to weaken the EU’s AI Act and weaken those existing protections,” said Brian Chen, policy director at Data & Society, a U.S.-based nonprofit.
Labour leaders expressed concerns on the impact of AI on workers, including what happens to workers whose jobs are taken over by AI and are pushed into new, less-protected jobs.
Published – February 11, 2025 10:02 am IST