French AI Action Summit, What Can We Expect?

The historic presidential Élysée Palace in Central Paris will host world leaders, tech CEOs and researchers for the French AI Action Summit, a two-day event starting Monday. U.S. Vice President JD Vance, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google’s Sundar Pichai will be on hand.

Representatives from 80 countries including China are reportedly planning to attend the event. Ding Xuexiang, vice premier of China, is likely to represent that country.

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Unlike the AI Seoul Summit 2024 and the 2023 UK AI Safety Summit, which largely focused on AI governance and safety, the French AI Action Summit is set to take a broader approach touching on AI open-source capabilities and how the technology can reshape labor markets.

The event also will focus on building a new global AI platform to promote use of the technology to help eliminate the concentration of AI capabilities by a limited few.

“AI can’t be the Wild West,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters Friday. “There have to be rules, and there are all kinds of fields where we don’t want AI because we don’t want it creating discrimination or mass control in our society.”

The event comes as Europe is struggling to catch up to the AI capabilities of the U.S. and China. Two top competitors to OpenAI – the French Mistral AI and the German Aleph Alpha – are located in the Europe, but business leaders worry that over-regulation could stymie innovation in the EU.

Experts have also cited the lack of adequate talent and risk-intolerant nature of European venture capitalists as obstacles to the EU’s AI capabilities.

“There is a wake-up call in Europe, we are thinking that it is really important to innovate,” said Anne Bouverot, French President’s Special Envoy on AI, who pointed out that the country is working on plans to support AI research and innovation.

The French AI Action Summit’s focus on open-source models is likely to draw more attention in the wake of the Jan. 20 launch of the open-source R1 reasoning model. News that Chinese AI firm DeepSeek’s model is comparable to OpenAI capabilities but cheaper to train sent tech stocks plummeting in the U.S. last week (see: DeepSeek’s New AI Model Shakes American Tech Industry).

While fears about AI doom led by closed-sourced players such as OpenAI dominated conversations during the UK AI Safety Summit, AI safety and democratization are likely to take center stage at the French Action Summit, given the influence of open-sourced players like Mistral AI and the French government (see: Rights Groups Call Out Shortcomings in EU Convention on AI).

“This is first and foremost a diplomatic move that aims at facilitating the convergence of AI governance, generating debate on the impact of AI on societies,” said Thomas Husson, vice president principal analyst at Forrester.

“President Macron’s decision to host the summit in Paris also aims at showcasing France’s capabilities and assets in the global AI race to make sure France remains one of the leading global destinations for foreign investments in artificial intelligence,” he said.