Macron Fires Back: “Safe Spaces Win” — France’s Bold Vision for AI Governance

When the Trump administration’s senior AI adviser publicly criticised European AI regulation at the Delhi summit, he may not have expected quite so direct a response. French President Emmanuel Macron, presiding over the G7 and making his mark on the global AI debate, shot back with characteristic confidence: Europe is a space for innovation, he said, but also a safe one — and safe spaces win in the long run. It was a line that drew attention precisely because it reframed the entire conversation.
The American argument, as articulated by the White House’s Sriram Krishnan, is that regulation stifles innovation and that entrepreneurs need freedom to build. Macron’s counter-argument is not that regulation is costless, but that its absence is far more costly — especially when the victims are children. He cited research showing that over a million children had their images turned into sexually explicit deepfakes in a single year, a figure he described as a crisis demanding immediate government action.
France’s response is already taking shape. Macron announced that France is pursuing a ban on social media access for children under 15, framing it as part of a broader effort to ensure that the laws governing behaviour in physical spaces also apply online. He called on platforms and regulators to collaborate, rather than waiting for one side to act. It was a pragmatic vision: not ideological hostility to technology, but insistence that technology serve people rather than prey on them.
António Guterres gave Macron strong international backing, using his speech to warn that unregulated AI is a threat not just to children but to the foundations of equitable global development. He called for AI to be treated as a global commons, governed in the interest of all people rather than the shareholders of a few companies. Sam Altman echoed this surprisingly, calling for a new international oversight body for AI — though his critics would note that OpenAI’s own governance record has been far from exemplary.
The Delhi summit brought together extraordinary power in one room — tech billionaires, heads of government, international institution leaders — yet the most important voice may have been the one invoking those not present: the millions of children whose safety is being determined by decisions made in rooms exactly like this one. Macron’s insistence that their interests come first was the kind of moral clarity that political summits rarely produce.