Ahead of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris next week, the French Culture Ministry is holding a public event this weekend, hoping to spark interest in AI, as the country aims to keep up with the competition in the sector from the United States and China.
France is hoping the summit, to be attended by world leaders as well as tech experts, will reinforce its leading European position, in a battle that is for now largely being played out between the US and China.
The country also hopes to stoke public interest in real-world uses of artificial intelligence (AI). The French Cultural Ministry has put together a weekend programme of events in Paris, ahead of the summit, for the public to learn about the use of AI in various arenas such as art, cinema, history and music.
For law professor Alexandra Bensamoun, it’s vital for France to keep abreast of the latest developments in AI, regardless of the sector. “I believe that we must get on the AI train, we must not stand on the platform and watch it go by," she said.
Bensamoun is among the guest speakers at a discussion being held at the National Library of France, focusing on AI's place in the cultural domain. She is part of a special task force informing the government on a legal framework for AI, at both a French and a European level.
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One of the biggest challenges artists face in the age of AI is having their work re-used or copied by AI tools and applications, without being properly credited – or indeed paid.
As an advisory member of a national committee set up by the Culture Ministry (CSPLA), she is dedicated to finding a suitable legal framework to protect intellectual property in creative fields.
Her role is to “reconcile” the growth potential of AI while remaining “consistent with European values".
'Fundamentally human'
For Bensamoun, AI is an important tool, but it should be viewed as just that: a tool, to be used by humans, rather than something that replaces human endeavour.
Artistic and literary creation is “fundamentally human and it is important to recognise the uniqueness of human creation and to protect it,” she said. “The objective is not to ban AI, the objective is to allow the deployment of AI in an ethical environment, in an environment that respects everyone."
To reach this goal, Bensamoun says two measures related to protecting copyright in cultural fields were included in the European Union's AI act – published in 2024.
The first states that suppliers of AI programmes must respect author copyright and so-called “neighbouring rights”, which regulate the republication of certain content.
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The second measure stipulates that AI suppliers must provide the public with “a sufficiently detailed summary of the content which was used for training artificial intelligence models”.
Such transparency at each step of the process, Bensamoun says, is only possible if all players in the AI field sit down and negotiate fair rules from the outset, rather than play catch-up via expensive legal action after the fact.
However, she adds that there are still unchartered waters moving forward, as copyright issues are necessarily inter-connected with other laws covering competition, image rights and the treatment of personal data.
Exploitation and education
Aside from legal questions, the use of AI raises philosophical and ethical debate.
One recent example that garnered media attention was the case of the late actor Alain Dorval, the French “voice” of American action hero Sylvester Stallone.
While Dorval passed away in February of 2024, a company called ElevenLabs used artificial intelligence to recreate his voice in order to dub Stallone’s voice for the trailer of the film Armor, due for a French release in March 2025.
However, as Bensamoun explains, Dorval’s family had only given their consent for simple tests to be done using the actor's voice, and not for its use for media exploitation. In the end, another actor was hired to dub the full film.
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In the report Bensamoun and other experts submitted to President Emmanuel Macron in 2024, one key recommendation was the importance of education on the use of AI, particularly in times of social and economic upheaval.
“We need to raise awareness, educate about AI. Not everyone is going to use AI, but everyone needs to understand what it is about," she said.
Macron’s special envoy for AI, Anne Bouverot, with whom Bensamoun collaborated, believes "science can help us think through this revolution" and "understand the societal impacts of AI".
“AI must not be the source of new divisions,” Bensamoun added.
One thing experts including Bensamoun and Bouverot agree on is that France and Europe will need to invest if they want to remain credible contenders in the AI race.
Recent events "show us that the field is still very open in terms of global competition," Bouverot told a packed lecture theatre at the Polytechnique engineering school in Paris on Thursday.
Hot on the heels of a US plan for a $500 billion AI investment scheme, France has also announced major investments running into the billions, including for new data centres on its territory.
