WAICF: Dialogue With The AI Act Co-Lead

Following our input to discussions on the AI Act, we joined the World AI Cannes Festival (WAICF) and a dialogue with Dragoş Tudorache, co-rapporteur of the AI Act and Vice-Chair of the Renew Europe Group in the European Parliament. WAICF, held annually at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, drew over 16,000 attendees and 300 international speakers in 2024, spanning eight stages and more than 250 sessions on AI's impact across business and society.

Related

• Contributions to AI Act discussions through the lens of public systems (OECD)‍ ‍

• OECD G7 Hiroshima Framework and reporting mechanism (OECD)‍ ‍

• General-Purpose AI Code of Practice (Working Groups 2 and 3)‍ ‍

Dialogue With The AI Act Co-Leads

As co-rapporteur, Tudorache led the European Parliament's negotiations on the AI Act alongside Brando Benifei, steering the legislation that the EU positions as the world's first comprehensive, horizontal framework for AI regulation. Tudorache has consistently framed the Act as an attempt to strike a balance between innovation and ethics rather than a brake on either: at Friends of Europe's "What the Chief Says" roundtable, he argued the legislation's risk-based, human-centric approach is designed to build the trust needed for AI adoption to scale, positioning regulatory clarity itself as a competitiveness tool rather than an obstacle to it. That same balance was echoed elsewhere in the WAICF programme, where our own contribution addressed the Act's compromises and pushed back on the notion that ethical guardrails necessarily limit innovation, alongside a broader look at the European Commission's AI initiatives supporting smarter governance and public administration.

Now in its third edition, WAICF 2024 brought together industry, research, and public administration across sessions ranging from AI regulation and financial-sector applications to robotics, data governance, environmental impact, and the shift from cybercrime to AI-enabled crime. Speakers included Yann LeCun on objective-driven AI systems, ITU's Frédéric Werner on AI for Good and the Sustainable Development Goals, and ENISA's Monica Adamczyk on AI manipulation by cyberattackers, alongside sessions with BNP Paribas, Shutterstock, and Continental on sector-specific deployment. The festival's structure, splitting business-focused programming across its first two days from a third day dedicated to public AI literacy, reflected a broader theme running through the event: that regulatory maturity and public trust need to develop in step with the technology itself.

References

¹ Friends of Europe. "What the Chief Says: A Conversation with Dragoş Tudorache on the AI Act." Event summary. 2024.

² Sawyer, Lily. "WAICF – World Artificial Intelligence Cannes Festival." Event overview. January 29, 2024.

³ Delattre, Laurent. "WAICF 2024 – Le Replay du Jour 2." IT for Business. February 19, 2024.