Vivatech 2025 consecrates AI as a central issue, between technological fascination, ethical tensions, digital sovereignty and growing politicization in public debate.
The 2025 edition marks a turning point for the living room: far from being limited to a simple technological showcase, the fair has transformed into a crossroads of debates and reflection on societal issues, with artificial intelligence at the heart of discussions, often to the detriment of other innovations. The analysis of media coverage and conversations on social networks sheds light on this evolution and offers a significant overview of major trends and challenges that shape the future of tech and society.
Artificial intelligence at the center of all attentions
Unsurprisingly, the AI concentrates most of the press articles and online conversations with more than 16,600 mentions identified between June 11 and 14, or almost 38% of Vivatech’s total visibility (estimates via Talkwalker watch software, Mentions in French and English). In addition, with 82,000 brands of engagement (comments, likes, sharing) around these content, artificial intelligence stands out as the new paradigm in the media narrative, as the reference technology in public imagination, far ahead of quantum computer (around 1,000 mentions) and blockchain (nearly 400 mentions).
Health as one of the strong axes of the 2025 edition
Among the flagship sectors of AI application, media analysis reveals that health constitutes the main field of expression during Vivatech, surpassing the sectors of sustainability, retail or even logistics.
Estimation of media visibility on a selection of 7 activity sectors. Visibility is calculated according to the volume of mentions in French and English languages identified by the Talkwalker watch software in the Online press, social networks, blogs and forums between June 11 and 14, 2025.
Health Tech has actually occupied a place of choice
Porte de Versailles, with a particular focus on mental health. This attention has notably crystallized around a stamped, an innovative robot capable of detecting depression signals by continuous facial and vocal analysis, which benefited from strong media coverage in France.
The ecosystem presented in the media covers the entire care course: in prevention with the onescope system, nicknamed the “lungs shazam” for its respiratory diagnostic capacities; urgently with wingcopter drones dedicated to the delivery of medical equipment; And in rehabilitation with the exoskeletons developed by the Hypershell start-up. All these innovations, offering concrete and daily solutions, ranging from mental health to medical follow -up, offer AI a particularly positive and reassuring media coverage, especially when they integrate an environmental dimension.
Sovereign digital Europe as the main issue
But AI does not reassure everyone. Vivatech’s media coverage partly reflects a rise in fears in the face of the dazzling progress of technology. AI fascinates as much as it questions.
The main issue that goes back in conversations and in the press during the event (with nearly 1,200 mentions) is that of sovereignty. The subject is placed at the center of attention with the speeches of Jensen Huang, the boss of Nvidia – media star of the show with 7,000 mentions -, announcing strategic partnerships with Mistral AI and Deutsche Telekom aimed at building a sovereign network of AI in Europe, and thus limiting dependence on large American platforms.
And although Emmanuel Macron welcomed the alliance between Mistral AI and Nvidia, presenting it as a model of strategic cooperation in the service of a sovereign Europe, several observers see it as an ambivalent approach-even counterproductive-, insofar as it consolidates dependence on technologies and American critical infrastructures, in particular the chips designed and manufactured by Nvidia. A declaration that would be more from the announcement effect than from a real effective advance towards a technological autonomy of Europe. Under the guise of digital autonomy, Nvidia would offer European leaders the illusion of sovereignty that they would not master.
Ethics, employment, regulation: AI on a crest line
If AI arouses geopolitical concerns, it is also found today in the face of the challenge of its social acceptability. Ethics and regulation issues have certainly remained in the background of the media coverage of Vivatech (around 20% of the mentions), but contrast with the intensity of the substantive debates they arouse. The question of work and employment alone crystallizes the tensions between the giants of the sector on the vision of the AI.
During his visit to Paris, Jensen Huang proposed an optimistic vision considering AI as an accelerator rather than a destructive, defining it as “the greatest equalizer” of our era, promising a “democratization” of technology provided that the necessary skills are developed.
One of the media highlights of the show was also the frontal attack of Jensen Huang against Dario Amodei, strongly contesting the predictions of the CEO of Anthropic on the massive destruction of Bureau Beginner Jobs and pleading for open and transparent development rather than a restrictive and regulated approach.
A growing politicization of AI in public debate
If Vivatech above all valued technological breakthroughs, he also highlighted the dissensions that open today between the tech patterns. This fracture on the vision of AI is perhaps only an overview of a tectonic fault where AI would become a political object in its own right, as divisive as themes such as security, immigration, education or pensions. Because AI is not neutral, it already involves political, economic and social choices: sovereignty, competitiveness, digital inclusion, carbon impact, digital sobriety … So many ideological markers which are more and more visible in public debate.
What impact for businesses?
This growing political cleavage cannot be ignored by companies and marks in terms of communication. It seems necessary to find the subtle balance between valuation of technology and a background positioning incorporating these societal issues. Their challenge is to reassure (without making policy) by adopting a coherent, assumed (even when controversial), committed and performative discourse. An AI claimed as ethical and responsible, but without being accompanied by tangible evidence, will inevitably be criticized and will risk creating distrust. Ethical committees and charters, already implemented in many companies, are a first step just like the embodiment of leadership for example via an “IA & Society” ambassador participating in the public debate on the subject in name of the company.
Symbolically, Vivatech 2025 therefore seems to mark an inflection point where AI is no longer only perceived as a technical or economic issue. It is now the mirror of our vision of progress. Faced with the complexity of these challenges, it is more than ever for companies to initiate the widest possible debate to imagine and support the future of artificial intelligence, avoiding the pitfall of sterile and reductive opposition between reason and emotion, between technical progress and human values, under penalty of rekindling the old debate between lights and romanticism.
