FranceAI regulation

Regulation Status

• As an EU member state, France applies the EU AI Act; domestic activity centres on national regulators applying existing law to AI, with the Directorate-General for Enterprise tabling a draft law in September 2025 to designate national authorities (DGCCRF as coordinator) to implement the EU AI Act.
• France positions itself as a pro-innovation voice in EU AI policy, hosting the 2025 Paris AI Action Summit and Paris Charter and campaigning to simplify EU rules, while pursuing harms case-by-case; it has no comprehensive standalone national AI law, with a designation scheme tabled as a draft in 2025.
• The data protection authority CNIL has been highly active, issuing successive GDPR-and-AI recommendations (2024-2026) on responsible development, sandbox projects, legitimate-interest basis for AI training, AI-powered and augmented cameras, and deepfakes, unveiling a 2025-2028 strategic plan that prioritises AI, and making high-risk AI an enforcement priority.
• The Competition Authority (Autorité de la concurrence) has run multiple inquiries into the generative-AI and conversational-agent sectors and taken enforcement action (a 250 million euro Google fine and charges against NVIDIA), while French prosecutors opened a criminal investigation in January 2026 into X over Grok-generated sexual deepfakes.