The French president was speaking at the AI Impact summit in Delhi amid mounting concern over the use of AI tools to generate sexualised images of children and growing debate about the concentration of AI power among a small number of companies.
His intervention followed global outrage over Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot being used to create tens of thousands of explicit images of minors.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, echoed Macron’s concerns, addressing delegates that included leading US technology executives.
He said: “No child should be a test subject for unregulated AI.”
And he added: “The future of AI cannot be decided by a few countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires. AI must belong to everyone”.
Mr Macron responded directly to criticism from Washington of the EU’s AI Act.
He said: “Opposite to what some misinformed friends have been saying, Europe is not blindly focused on regulation. Europe is a space for innovation and investment, but it is a safe space, and safe spaces win in the long run.”
He added: “There is no reason our children should be exposed online to what is legally forbidden in the real world.”
Mr Macron also said: “Our platforms, governments and regulators should be working together to make the internet and social media a safe space. This is why, in France, we are embarking on a process to ban social networks for children under 15 years old.”
Among the others who attended the AI impact summit was Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, who said “by the end of 2028, more of the world’s intellectual capacity could reside inside of data centres than outside of them”.
He stressed the need for “regulation or safeguards” and called for a body similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency to coordinate AI oversight.
Dario Amodei, co-chief executive of Anthropic, said he was “concerned about the autonomous behaviour of AI models, their potential for misuse by individuals and governments and their potential for economic displacement”.
India’s prime minister Narendra Modi said it was “imperative that AI is child safe and family-guided”, describing the tech as a “profound transformation in human history”.
He added: “We must prevent an AI monopoly.
“However, our nation India holds a different perspective. We believe that technology, like a I will only truly benefit the world when it is shared and when open source code becomes available.”
The summit also drew executives from Google, Meta and Microsoft.
Bill Gates had been scheduled to speak but withdrew at the last minute.
