There were many people at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi who could have made the argument Emmanuel Macron made. The Unicef-Interpol research documenting 1.2 million child victims of AI deepfakes in a single year was available to everyone. The moral logic — that what is illegal in the physical world must be illegal online — is not complicated. The policy tools — legislation, international coordination, platform accountability — are not obscure. What was required was a leader willing to make the argument forcefully, in front of an audience with commercial interests in hearing something different.
Macron made that argument. He named the problem, cited the evidence, connected it to the regulatory debate and proposed specific policy remedies. He refused to accept the framing of regulation as inherently anti-innovation. He refused to treat child safety as a sidebar to the main event of AI governance. And he did all of this in a room that included some of the most commercially powerful figures in the technology industry, who have every reason to prefer a world where governments defer to their judgment.
His domestic record gives his international argument credibility. France is not asking other countries to do what it has not done itself — it is pursuing legislation on social media for under-15s, making its own commitment visible and its own position consistent. Macron’s G7 presidency will test whether this domestic seriousness can be translated into international action, but the consistency between domestic policy and international advocacy is itself a form of political leadership.
The moment in Delhi was, in a small way, a defining one — not just for Macron but for the broader question of whether democratic governments will exercise meaningful authority over AI development or cede that authority to the market. Macron chose to exercise it. His allies — Guterres, Modi, and cautiously some within the tech industry — gave him important support. The children whose safety depends on that choice did not get a seat at the table in Delhi. But they got a voice, and it was Macron’s.
Standing up for children when it is easier to look away is not complicated. It requires political will, moral clarity and the courage to say unpopular things in powerful rooms. In Delhi, Macron showed that he has all three. Whether others follow determines whether the moment becomes a movement.