Macron Puts Tech Companies on Notice: Child Safety Is Now a G7 Priority

Emmanuel Macron used the AI Impact Summit in Delhi to send a message to the technology industry that it would be unwise to ignore. As France holds the G7 presidency, he announced that child safety in the digital world will be a central priority of that presidency — and that the French government expects platforms, AI developers and regulators to work together to achieve it. This is not a request. It is a political commitment.
The urgency of that commitment is backed by data. Research by Unicef and Interpol found that 1.2 million children in 11 countries had been victimised by AI-generated explicit deepfakes in a single year. One in 25 children in the worst-affected countries had experienced this form of abuse. The Grok chatbot had been used to produce tens of thousands of sexualised images of children. These are not theoretical risks — they are documented, ongoing harms that the technology industry has so far failed to prevent.
Macron’s position is that voluntary industry commitments are insufficient. His domestic policy — France is pursuing legislation to ban social media for under-15s — reflects a conviction that this problem requires governmental authority to address. His international agenda is to export that authority, building a coalition of G7 governments willing to set enforceable standards rather than accept the industry’s assurances that it is working on the problem.
The broader geopolitical context complicates this agenda. The Trump administration has actively opposed AI regulation, with its AI adviser using the Delhi summit to attack the EU’s AI Act as hostile to entrepreneurship. Macron’s response was patient but pointed: Europe innovates and invests while also protecting people, and the evidence does not support the claim that these priorities are in conflict. He framed his critics as misinformed rather than malicious — a distinction that leaves room for dialogue while refusing to concede the argument.
António Guterres and Narendra Modi both gave Macron significant support, the former on global governance and the latter on child-safe AI development. Sam Altman’s endorsement of an international oversight body was more cautious but still notable. The tech companies now have a clearer picture of what the G7 under French leadership will push for. Whether they adapt proactively or wait to be regulated is the choice now in front of them.