The EU AI Act prohibits AI systems that deploy purposefully manipulative or deceptive techniques, with the objective, or the effect of materially distorting the behaviour of a person.
Manipulation is however often treated as a discrete event, but here what's happening is a process -- gradual adaptation with multiple pathways of impact on human autonomy: cognitive offloading, emotional dependency, relational erosion, reduced tolerance for conflict, and identity reshaping. This makes the manipulation much harder to prove.
(If you ever doubt that people are forming strong bonds with chatbots, head to r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and check out testimonies)
One of the key reasons for this emotional bonding seems to be *memory*: that the system remembers what we've told it makes it feel like it cares.
#WimLDSParis concludes with Ana Catarina de Alencar on AI, vulnerability and human autonomy.
A new type of bond is emerging through simulated artificial relationships, which feel very much real and reciprocal.
Young people are using AI companions: in France, 48% of users aged 11-25 discuss intimate matters with conversational AIs. In the US, 72% of 13-17 teenagers have talked to an AI companion at least once, and 32% of them have told them things they don't talk about with friends or family.
Next up at #WiMLDSParis, Betty Jeulin (lawyer) on what is protected, what is exposed and who is liable in the context of genAI.
Betty is also requesting that we refrain from posting details on social media, so my live-tooting load is pretty light this evening.
Ce soir à #WiMLDSParis, Élise Farge-di-Maria (directrice de programme) et Audrey Clevy (ingénieure IA) nous présentent l'IA au Ministère de la Justice.
(Malheureusement elles demandent à ce qu'on ne communiquent pas sur les réseaux sociaux sur le contenu de leur exposé.)
Oh, and the two French reports I mentioned when introducing the #WiMLDSParis x MLOpsParis meetup were:
- À niveau égal, appréciation égale ? Comment les appréciations scolaires varient en fonction du sexe des élèves (Same level, same comments? How report card comments vary depending on student sex) by Institut des Politiques Publiques (the institution in charge of the evaluation of public policy, you can tell by the use of sex instead of gender that they're not hardcore leftists) https://www.ipp.eu/actualites/a-niveau-egal-appreciation-egale-comment-les-appreciations-scolaires-varient-en-fonction-du-sexe-des-eleves/
- Rapport 2026 sur l'état des lieux du sexisme en France : la menace masculiniste (2026 Report on the state of sexism in France: the masculinist threat) by the Haut Conseil à l'Égalité entre les femmes et les hommes (the governmental body in charge ot proposing/evaluating policies for women's rights, again, not raving feminists) https://www.haut-conseil-egalite.gouv.fr/rapport-2026-sur-letat-des-lieux-du-sexisme-en-france-la-menace-masculiniste
Le pôle éducation de l'IPP publie ce mardi 13 janvier 2026 une nouvelle note sur le sujet des inégalités de genre à l'école. Cette note s'appuie sur l’étude statistique des bulletins scolaires remis à plus de 600 000 lycéens de terminale scientifique au cours de la période 2013-2017. Elle révèle des différences dans les appréciations
Claire Helme-Guizon from Algolia (if you don't know them, they're a SaaS – that's search as a service – company, meaning they provide search engines for the websites that need them) describing some of the challenges of building a learning-to-rank (LTR) model at the joint #WiMLDSParis x MLOpsParis meetup.
(Spoiler: it's not that simple)
Chloé Azencott