Macron defends a plural AI without choosing between "one that is totally Chinese or from the US."

Bangkok, May 27 (EFE).- French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday advocated for a "plural" artificial intelligence (AI), which does not mean "having to choose between one that is entirely made in China or in the United States," amid the technological struggle between the superpowers.

Macron made these statements in front of students at the University of Science and Technology in Hanoi, where he is on an official visit, as part of a tour of Southeast Asia that will take him this afternoon to Indonesia and will conclude this Friday in Singapore.

"We want to jointly develop AI, and also robotics, energy... We share the same humanist vision of the technological transition," Macron said about possible agreements between France and Vietnam in these sectors.

Macron announced in February that France will receive 109 billion euros in investments in artificial intelligence "in the coming years", and has called in the past for a "plural multilateralism" to allow the creation of rules for AI to advance.

"We have too much dependence," Macron said. "We must continue to work with them (referring to China and the US), but the system must be open and free," he added, and stressed that they have to be open source models. Your comments come at the height of the U.S. and China's struggle for dominance in technological innovations in AI, intensified after this year's revolution of the Chinese open-source app DeepSeek, which came to lead downloads on Apple devices in the U.S.

Washington has imposed controls on the export of advanced semiconductors, essential for training AI models, and has raised the possibility of bans on Chinese applications like TikTok.

Beijing, for its part, maintains the block on US services such as Google, Facebook, X or Instagram, and demands that AI systems respect the "core socialist values", prohibiting content that endangers national security or territorial unity. The French president leaves Vietnam today after signing agreements worth 9 billion euros the day before in sectors such as aeronautics, defense, or energy, including the purchase of the Vietnamese low-cost airline VietJet Air from Airbus of 20 A330-900 neo wide-body aircraft.

Macron's trip comes amid negotiations between both Europe and Southeast Asia with Washington to reduce the so-called "reciprocal tariffs" of the Donald Trump administration, and with the interest of both parties in diversifying and seeking new trade partners. EFE