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Europe says it will ease regulations on artificial intelligence at a key AI summit in Paris on Feb. 11, 2025, that brought together the U.S. and other global tech giants and politicians. But some experts see bigger challenges stalling the bloc’s ambitions to be an AI heavyweight, from the need to pool resources to attracting more investment and talent. After U.S. President Donald Trump’s massive Stargate investment project and China’s DeepSeek startup, Europe wants to get a share of the artificial intelligence pie. Among other announcements at the Paris summit, co-host French President Emmanuel Macron outlined plans for $113 billion in private AI investment. The two-day summit underscored tensions between fears of too much AI regulation and not enough. “At this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new Industrial Revolution, one on par with the steam engine or Bessemer steel,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance told summit attendees Tuesday. “But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball.” Macron, who’s been nicknamed France’s startup president, outlined caveats. He said advancing international governance of AI will enable the consolidation of trust, acceleration and innovation in order to set the rules for AI, which are necessary to move forward. Currently, Europe's AI industry lags behind those of the U.S. and China. But the right policies, some experts believe, can help close the gap. “Europe really has pretty much everything else it needs to lead in AI or other complex technologies,” said Pierre Alexandre Balland, chief data scientist at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “The talent is absolutely incredible. … [T]he scale of the European economy is also huge … the education system. Essentially, we see a wind of change in the EU really led by France, and Emmanuel Macron is very much behind that.” Beyond easing EU regulations, Balland sees bigger challenges — such as pooling European research and other resources, calling for investing pension funds to finance AI’s growth, and concentrating on a single AI hub in Europe. “Paris is absolutely by far the leading AI ecosystem in Europe,” he said. Alicia Garcia-Herrero, senior fellow at Brussels-based Bruegel policy institute, agreed France is leading the way. She believes Europe should narrow its goals — focusing on areas like AI applications for robotics. “Can the AI make the EU more competitive? No doubt,” Garcia-Herrero said. “But I think there’s many other issues that need to be solved beyond AI. The most important one is having a single market.” Paris summit organizers have also pushed for commitments on making AI more ethical, accessible and environmentally sustainable.

Europe to cut red tape to make artificial intelligence advancements easier.

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Paris — U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Europeans on Tuesday their "massive" regulations on artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as "authoritarian censorship." The mood on AI has shifted as the technology takes root, from one of concerns around safety to geopolitical competition, as countries jockey to nurture the next big AI giant. Vance, setting out the Trump administration's America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI and strongly opposed the European Union's far tougher regulatory approach. "We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry," Vance told an AI summit of CEOs and heads of state in Paris. "We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship," he added. Vance criticized the "massive regulations" created by the EU's Digital Services Act, as well as Europe's online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, which he said meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms. "Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation," he said. European lawmakers last year approved the bloc's AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules governing the technology. Vance is leading the American delegation at the Paris summit. Vance also appeared to take aim at China at a delicate moment for the U.S. technology sector. Last month, Chinese startup DeepSeek freely distributed a powerful AI reasoning model that some said challenged U.S. technology leadership. It sent shares of American chip designer Nvidia down 17%. "From CCTV to 5G equipment, we're all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that's been heavily subsidized and exported by authoritarian regimes," Vance said. But he said that "partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure. Should a deal seem too good to be true? Just remember the old adage that we learned in Silicon Valley: if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product." Vance did not mention DeepSeek by name. There has been no evidence of information being able to surreptitiously flow through the startup's technology to China’s government, and the underlying code is freely available to use and view. However, some government organizations have reportedly banned DeepSeek’s use. Speaking after Vance, French President Emmanuel Macron said that he was fully in favor of trimming red tape, but he stressed that regulation was still needed to ensure trust in AI, or people would end up rejecting it. "We need a trustworthy AI," he said. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen also said the EU would cut red tape and invest more in AI. In a bilateral meeting, Vance and von der Leyen were also likely to discuss Trump's substantial increase of tariffs on steel. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was expected to address the summit on Tuesday. A consortium led by Musk said on Monday it had offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit controlling OpenAI. Altman promptly posted on X: "no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want." The technology world has closely watched whether the Trump administration will ease recent antitrust enforcement that had seen the U.S. sue or investigate the industry's biggest players. Vance said the U.S. would champion American AI -- which big players develop -- he also said: "Our laws will keep Big Tech, little tech, and all other developers on a level playing field."

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US vice president warns global leaders against striking AI deals with 'authoritarian regimes' in a veiled jab at China.