Selon l'Arcep, l'essor de l'IA générative remet en question l'approche traditionnelle de l'Europe en matière de neutralité du Net, en créant de nouveaux « gardiens » et en[...]

The rise of generative AI is challenging Europe's longstanding approach to net neutrality, creating new gatekeepers and reshaping how users access information and content online, according to France's telecom regulator Arcep. Read Laure de La Raudière's interview published in Politico's newsletter on 9 April 2026

From the horse's mouth: "Generative AI is a new intermediary between the internet and users … it is becoming one of the main entry points to the internet," Arcep Chair Laure de La Raudière told Morning Tech, building on a study that showed AI doesn't just summarize the web but actively reshapes what users see, from a much narrower and less transparent set of sources. "Unlike search engines, generative AI provides a single answer … and does not promote the discoverability of content."

Why it's a problem: At its core, net neutrality means internet providers must treat all traffic equally - no blocking, throttling or prioritizing - so users can freely access and share content and services. In the EU, those obligations apply primarily to telecom operators. But as AI chatbots emerge as all-powerful new intermediaries, policymakers are starting to question whether that framework still captures how the internet actually works. "The AI selects and ranks content … in a way that is relatively opaque to the user," de la Raudière said, warning that users are increasingly relying on a single, pre-digested answer rather than navigating the web themselves.

That's timely: The debate comes as the European Commission's proposed Digital Networks Act reopens discussions around the EU's 2015 Open Internet Regulation - offering a rare opportunity to revisit how neutrality should apply in a platform- and AI-driven internet.

Not so fast: Telecom operators have long been pushing to both extend obligations to other digital players and relax some rules to enable new services like 5G slicing. But Arcep is pushing back on that front. "There is no contradiction between 5G slicing and net neutrality," de la Raudière said, arguing the technology can be accommodated under existing rules, with clearer incoming guidance rather than legislative change.

The guiding principle: "The principle of an open internet must apply to all intermediaries," she said, though how exactly that should translate into legislation is still to be determined. That could mean new obligations around transparency, interoperability and user choice, while competition tools like the Digital Markets Act would need to further address concentration in AI and cloud markets - alongside efforts to develop new ways to compensate content providers. "As soon as an intermediary fails to uphold the open internet principle, it must be subject to obligations," she added.