French President Emmanuel Macron made a bold declaration at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, pushing back firmly against American criticism of Europe’s approach to artificial intelligence regulation. Far from backing down, Macron doubled down, vowing to make child safety online a central pillar of France’s presidency of the G7. His speech sent a clear signal to the world: Europe will not be lectured on innovation while children are being harmed.
The summit brought together some of the most powerful figures in global tech and government, yet the mood was anything but celebratory. A recent study by Unicef and Interpol found that at least 1.2 million children across 11 countries had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in just one year. In some countries, that translates to one in every 25 children — the equivalent of one child per classroom.
Macron’s response was direct and unsparing. He announced that France is moving toward banning children under 15 from social media platforms entirely, calling it unacceptable that children face online what is legally forbidden in the real world. He framed the internet not as a lawless frontier but as a space that must be governed in the public interest, particularly for the young.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reinforced Macron’s message, telling the assembled tech billionaires that no child should serve as a test subject for unregulated AI. He warned that the future of this technology cannot and must not be decided by a handful of powerful nations or wealthy individuals. “AI must belong to everyone,” Guterres said, a statement that resonated strongly in a room where the concentration of AI power was itself a subject of debate.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi added his voice to the chorus, comparing the rise of AI to the discovery of fire and calling for open-source development so the technology can benefit all nations equally. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei expressed concern about autonomous AI behaviour and economic displacement. The Delhi summit made one thing clear: the global conversation about AI governance has only just begun, and Macron intends to be at its centre.