AI Action Summit and Regulatory Concerns That Won’t Go Away

The AI Action Summit in Paris this week came on the heels of the DeepSeek-R1 launch by Chinese AI company, as well as recent enforcement actions of the EU AI Act. A number of leaders from both inside and outside of Europe criticized the EU law, fearing that new regulations will stymie innovation.

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The AI Action Summit was an opportunity for the French and other EU-based AI companies to position themselves as global players in the booming AI market, said Thomas Husson, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

“DeepSeek showed that innovation is possible, which plays more in favor of some of the European players. And, yes, it also raised some concerns because the model is nurtured with some Chinese data and reasoning that may jeopardize self-expression and may have some broader consequences for democracies,” said Husson, who attended the two-day summit along with lawmakers and tech leaders from more than 100 countries.

Concerns about overregulation in the EU is something that European companies also share with their American counterparts, especially for a technology as “disruptive as AI,” he said.

In this video with Information Security Media Group, Husson also discussed:

• Major areas of focus for the AI Action Summit;
• Reactions to the DeepSeek-R1 launch and Chinese AI capabilities;
• How European AI companies are responding to the EU AI Act;
• The next phase of AI governance.

At Forrester, Husson’s research focuses on the disruptive role of culture, consumer behaviors, and technology, particularly that of AI. Husson previously spent four years at Jupiter Research as a senior mobile analyst and six years at Bouygues Telecom.