AI for humanity: French President Macron call for human-centric tech at Impact Summit 2026 | VIDEO

New Delhi: French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday praised India’s digital transformation as a global benchmark, telling an audience of world leaders and tech executives that the nation has achieved a "civilisation story" by bringing 1.4 billion people into the digital economy.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit 2026, Macron highlighted the dramatic shift in India’s financial landscape over the last decade. He contrasted the past struggles of small-scale entrepreneurs with today’s seamless digital integration.

"Ten years ago, a street vendor cannot open a bank account in Mumbai, but today he can accept payments online," Macron said. "No address, no papers, no access and today the same vendor accepts payments on his phone. India has built something no other country has built, a digital identity for 1.4 billion people."

The "India Stack" Model

The French President lauded the "India Stack", the country’s open-source digital public infrastructure, which includes a biometric ID system and a digital payment network that now handles 20 billion transactions monthly. He also noted the 500 million digital health IDs issued under the system.

"They call it the India Stack Open Interoperable Sovereign," Macron remarked. "That is what this summit is about. We are clearly at the beginning of a huge acceleration, and you perfectly described it during your interventions."

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AI as a Strategic Enabler

Macron framed Artificial Intelligence as a critical tool for global progress, referencing the AI Action Summit co-hosted by France and India in Paris last year. He characterised AI as an "enabler for our humanity to innovate faster" across sectors such as healthcare, energy, and agriculture.

He specifically commended India’s "sovereign choice" to focus on Small Language Models (SMLs) designed for smartphones and the government’s deployment of 38,000 GPUs at subsidised rates for startups.

"AI, GPU, chips are now directly translated in geopolitical and macroeconomic terms," Macron observed. "Some time for the best, some time for the worst, I have to say."

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A Human-Centric Future

The summit, the first of its kind held in the Global South, is centred on the principle of "AI for Humanity." Macron concluded by asserting that the future of technology belongs to those who prioritise ethics and human welfare.

"The future of AI will be built by those who combine innovation and responsibility, technology with humanity, and India and France will help to shape this future together," he said.

The five-day event at Bharat Mandapam, which includes heads of state and CEOs from Silicon Valley, aims to bridge the "global AI divide" and promote sustainable advancement for developing nations.

With inputs from ANI