Razzle dazzle time for AI in Paris as Macron goes deepfake

Emmanuel Macron is making a point. He’s shared deepfake videos of his face superimposed on to celebrities’ bodies.

One includes the French AI president sporting a mullet, another shows him dancing to the disco hit Voyage, Voyage. There’s Macron rapping, having a hairstyling lesson and appearing in the spy-comedy film OSS117.

At one point he’s the US action hero MacGyver. It’s not sinister, this isn’t a collection his security has downloaded from social media; it’s all been done with his approval. As he says, excitedly: “That’s really me.”

It's to show the brilliance of tech, heralding the launch of France’s two-day AI Action Summit in Paris. World leaders are attending, along with AI superstars, such as OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

Macron is co-hosting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As a statement of power and intent, the gathering at the Grand Palais takes some beating. It’s designed to show French, and by extension EU, commitment to developing and expanding AI, backed by heavyweight global investment totalling $109 billion, up to $50 billion of which is coming from UAE.

“This is the equivalent for France of what the US announced for Stargate,” said Macron, referencing US President Donald Trump’s $500 billion AI infrastructure project to harness Chat GPT, Oracle and SoftBank. The medley of fake videos, said Macron, was the fun part, the amuse-bouche. “More seriously, with artificial intelligence, we can do some very big things: change health care, energy, life in our society. France and Europe must be at the heart of this revolution to seize every opportunity and also to promote our principles.

That is the takeaway, that France and the EU are in a race and they will not be left behind. Until recently, there was the nagging feeling that Europe did not take AI seriously, or at least it was not as smitten as the two powerhouses of the US and China. For so long a cradle of innovation and advancement, the bloc was preferring to dwell on past glories, rather than forging ahead. The “M&M” conference is intended to put that doubt to rest.

Even the choice of Macron’s co-chairman is redolent with symbolism. Modi’s India is grasping AI as an opportunity to make a dramatic leap, allying home-grown talent to a vast underlying need and appetite. The combination of France, EU, India and the UAE has the potential to be more than a match for American and Chinese muscle.

With good reason, the French media and public are entranced. This represents a huge step forward, restoring national pride, appealing to youth, embracing technology. It puts their country and its neighbours on an international par, for once pushing Silicon Valley and its accompanying razzamatazz to the sidelines. It plays as well to historical strength. Like Britain, France and its EU members have excelled previously – and love saying so – but have proved unable or unwilling to draw on that legacy to progress AI, not in a concerted, focused manner.

While no one doubts Macron’s seriousness and vision, the test will be just how far France and the EU want to proceed and at what pace. Ironically, while their President used clever montages to illustrate the brilliant potential of AI, local sceptics were lining up to carp at AI’s harmful side, highlighting the use of content without permission – in material just like Macron’s opening montage, except often much worse.

There is a fear of Europe allowing itself to be ground down in regulation, concentrating on the negative aspects of AI and failing to see the technology for what it is and more importantly, what it can achieve. The most vital statistic of all, amid a sea of research and surveys, should be the one from the World Economic Forum, that AI could add €2.7 billion to Europe’s economy by 2030. This ought to be the overriding number, not least for a region that has been slowing economically.

Rowing about the rules while China catapults DeepSeek and Donald Trump’s US deregulates apace cannot be the answer. That’s not to say attention must be afforded to AI’s downside, of course it must but it’s a matter of degree.

Where the EU and, indeed, Britain are concerned, there is the suspicion that the new tech is instinctively viewed as alien, to be challenged and picked apart, based on cultural values rather than something to be wholeheartedly embraced and nurtured. Those non-scientific politicians and social commentators, many of them older, prefer to drive in the slow lane not the fast highway.

As new US Vice President JD Vance warned at the Paris summit: “We want to embark on the AI revolution before us with the spirit of openness and collaboration, but to create that kind of trust we need international regulatory regimes that foster creation.” He went on to echo complaints from US companies of European efforts to rein in big tech, calling for a legal regime that “does not strangle” AI.

Inevitably, there will be those who immediately rebel against Vance, playing the man, together with his boss, and not the message.

Vance did not say regulation-free, he was seeking a framework that would also allow AI to flourish. That, surely, should be France and the EU’s goal. They have the resources – the backing of the likes of Macron, educational excellence and, thanks to UAE and others, the requisite funding. AI is theirs for the taking.