India and France seek to ensure AI norms "reflect democratic values"

In the joint statement, the two countries recalled their joint commitment to promote safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems to accelerate progress towards the full realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as their efforts to call upon the international community to foster an enabling environment for international cooperation on artificial intelligence capacity-building, emphasize that international law, in particular the Charter of the United Nations, as well as human rights and fundamental freedoms, must be respected, the statement said.

India and France, recalling the 2023 Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of digital technologies, and in view of the upcoming India-France Year of Innovation in 2026 said they will take part in the development of this emerging technology, and commit to ensure its positive impacts on their economies and societies.

Both countries shared the importance of building a framework to ensure a conception, design and development of AI for the public interest, respectful of human rights and fundamental freedoms, in compliance with applicable legal frameworks regarding intellectual property rights, privacy and use of personal data.

As per the joint statement, both countries committed to ensure a conception, design and development of AI and generative AI that does not result in discrimination and inequality nor in the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation, exacerbating bias, the development of free and open resources for all countries, innovators, researchers and citizens, to promote decentralization and avoid concentration of this transformative technology.

It said the two countries will also ensure that economic and market players may ensure safe and trusted development, in particular for training data for their models, authorized uses, transparent rules and control procedures, the development of AI systems for the global good and the benefit of all (including but not limited to global health, sustainable agriculture, education, climate change, disaster management, biodiversity protection, energy, food security among others).

The leaders also said they would ensure the development of generative AI supporting both linguistic and cultural diversities, the building of an efficient and inclusive governance framework for the development of a safe, open, secure, trustworthy, responsible and ethical AI use and solutions, and building upon the AI Action Summit co-chaired by France and India in Paris in February 2025.

India and France intend to pursue and expand their bilateral cooperation, in particular to foster industrial partnerships between their two countries, such as for electronic components or computing capacities, to deepen research partnerships for the development of broad and open and freely reusable large language models trained to support and promote our linguistic diversity.

The bilateral cooperation also ensure support academic research on social consequences of AI development, which will have an impact on all aspects of our societies, encouragement of civil society initiatives on AI, aiming at fostering exchanges among entrepreneurs, researchers and public actors in the field of AI.

It would establish a stronger cooperation regarding child safety online, by developing concrete synergies between ongoing initiatives supported by the two countries and to keep supporting the emergence of digital public infrastructures for AI, by promoting shared objectives and the development of common resources in the field of data, personal data protection, open source tools and capacity building, the statement said. (ANI)