Anthropomorphized AI and persuasion technologies that appeal to human vulnerabilities have become the norm. The Cannes Declaration on the Sovereignty of the Mind was signed by a coalition of experts including DataEthics.eu’s Academic Director Gry Hasselbalch at the World AI Cannes Festival taking place 12-13 February 2026 to challenge this norm. The declaration urges governments, parliaments, international organisations, regulators, technology companies, investors, research institutions, media organisations, civil society, and citizens worldwide to defend and protect human power and the sovereignty of the human mind against manipulative AI.

The group of experts convened first in a closed-door roundtable and later launched the declaration at the event. The declaration confronts what the coalition identifies as a democratic risk. The most dominant generative AI systems are technologies of hyper-persuasion that appeals exclusively to human emotional vulnerabilities and designed to bypass human reflection. The declaration states:

“These systems are not merely tools for productivity or information retrieval; they increasingly shape what people notice, trust, remember, think, and choose. In a word, they are the new means and vehicles of knowledge. This is not a secondary effect. It is becoming a business model and, in some contexts, a geopolitical instrument. We still face a deeper challenge: the emergence of an economy and an infrastructure aimed at the formation and reshaping of thought itself. One that challenges the very identity of humanity and unique “human power”. When conversational systems mediate access to information and personalize influence at scale, they can become technologies of persuasion that operate continuously and asymmetrically, establishing simulated intimate relationships that many users experience as real and that can condition the formation of beliefs, preferences, and decisions. This is the “capitalism of minds”: value extraction that goes beyond attention to shape preferences, beliefs, and behaviour, while learning from users’ unguarded inner lives. No democracy should accept a situation in which the cognitive autonomy and freedom of entire populations depend on the incentives, policies, or vulnerabilities of a handful of gatekeepers.”

The declaration affirms Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognising the right to freedom of thought in the digital age – that freedom must include the protection against industrial-scale manipulation of human thought.

Alongside DataEthics.eu’s Academic Director Gry Hasselbalch, the document was signed by a coalition of experts:

• Stefano Quintarelli, Chairman of the Advisory Board of the UN’s International Computing Centre.
• Gianluca Carlo Misuraca, Founder & CEO of Inspiring Futures.
• Erika Staël von Holstein, Executive Director of ReImagine Europa
• Simona Tiribelli, Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy.
• Francesca Rossi, IBM Fellow and AI Ethics Global Leader.
• Mark Hunyadi, Professor of Social and Moral Philosophy.
• Brando Benifei, Member of the European Parliament and Co-Rapporteur of the EU AI Act.
• Paul Nemitz, Principal Advisor at the European Commission.
• Bernard Benhamou, Secretary General of the Institute of Digital Sovereignty.
• Christian Kastrop, Former State Secretary and Professor for Digitalization.
• Emanuela Girardi, Founder and President of Pop AI.
• Marco Bentivogli, Coordinator of Base Italia.
• Francesco Vecchi, Civic AI Coordinator at Eumans.
• Risto Uuk, EU Policy Lead at the Future of Life Institute.
• Clay Busia, Expert in Digital Governance and Innovation.