The Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris was meant to close with a shared statement from world leaders. Instead, the summit highlighted a familiar problem: governments can agree that artificial intelligence matters, but not always on how it should be governed.
A total of 61 countries signed the declaration. The U.S. and the U.K. did not, leaving the Paris AI declaration as another example of how global AI policy is being shaped by competing priorities, diplomatic tension and different views of regulation.
What the Paris declaration said
The declaration backed by 61 countries focuses on ensuring AI is “open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy.” It also calls for more cooperation on AI governance and for a wider “global dialogue.”
China, India, Japan, Australia, and Canada were among the countries that signed. More countries may sign the declaration in the hours after the event, according to the source article.
The statement was not described as especially ambitious when compared with the Bletchley and Seoul declarations. Even so, it was intended to create a visible point of alignment after a summit centered on the future of artificial intelligence.
That alignment did not fully materialize. The refusal by the U.S. and the U.K. to sign drew attention away from the number of governments that did support the declaration and toward the limits of consensus on AI.
Why the U.S. refused to sign
For the U.S., the decision not to sign was framed as a matter of principle. U.S. vice president, JD Vance, used a speech during the summit’s closing ceremony to argue that American AI should not be constrained by political or ideological pressure.
“We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,”
He also underlined the U.S. position in the global AI race.
“The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,”
The source article places the decision in the broader context of Donald Trump’s second presidency. During its early days, the U.S. withdrew from several international bodies, including the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement. The Paris summit’s AI consensus can now be added to that list.
The U.K. also refused to sign the statement. The source article does not give a detailed explanation for the U.K. decision, so the clearest conclusion is narrower: the summit did not produce a united front among all major participants.
A debate over regulation and innovation
The summit also reflected a broader shift in the language around AI policy. Lighter regulation was a common theme across the event, even among leaders who defended the need for common rules.
EU president Ursula von der Leyen used the AI Act as an example of regulation designed to make the market easier to navigate. She said the goal was to provide one set of safe rules across the European Union rather than a patchwork of national systems.
“This is the purpose of the AI Act to provide for one single set of safe rules across the European Union — 450 million people,”
“Instead of 27 different national regulations and safeties in the interest of business.”
She also acknowledged pressure to reduce complexity.
“At the same time, I know that we have to make it easier, and we have to cut red tape — and we will,”
French president Emmanuel Macron made a related argument. On Monday, he urged Europe to simplify its regulations to get back into the AI race. He said Europe needed to synchronize with the rest of the world in areas including transmission, permitting, authorization and clinical trials.
On Tuesday, Macron said government leaders should “avoid the risk-opportunity dilemma” and “the immediate need for regulation, which could block innovation.” At the same time, he defended international governance, arguing that rules are necessary for AI to move forward.
“It’s not a question of defiance, it’s not a question of thwarting innovation, it’s a question of enabling [innovation] to happen at an international level while avoiding fragmentation,”
What the split reveals
The Paris AI Action Summit showed that the basic vocabulary of AI governance is still contested. Words such as open, inclusive, safe and trustworthy may sound broad enough to unite governments, but the politics behind them are more complicated.
For some leaders, common rules are a way to reduce fragmentation and support innovation across borders. For others, international AI statements can look like a constraint on national advantage or a vehicle for values they do not want embedded in technology policy.
That tension matters because AI development is not limited to one market. The same systems, companies and research paths can quickly become global, while governments still answer to national priorities. The Paris declaration tried to create a shared direction, but the refusal by the U.S. and the U.K. showed how fragile that effort can be.
Disappointment from the AI sector
Early reactions included disappointment over the declaration’s lack of ambition. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei said the next international summit should not repeat what he called a missed opportunity.
“At the next international summit, we should not repeat this missed opportunity,”
“The advance of AI presents major new global challenges. We must move faster and with greater clarity to confront them.”
That response captures the central pressure around international AI governance. The technology is advancing, governments are trying to coordinate, and the gap between broad agreement and concrete action remains visible.
The Paris summit did not end with the kind of universal statement its organizers may have wanted. It did, however, make one thing clear: the future of AI policy will be shaped as much by geopolitical alignment as by technical risk, business opportunity and regulatory design.