After years of discreet progress, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for military purposes is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. As the Summit for Action on AI is being held in Paris on February 10 and 11, a number of tie-ups between major players in the tech industry and the state on defense issues have been unveiled in recent weeks. This phenomenon comes in the wake of Donald Trump's arrival in the White House and Elon Musk's huge changes at the head of his Department of Government Efficiency.

The latest and most spectacular change of direction comes from Google. On February 4, the digital giant decided to bend its AI principles, explicitly removing from its red lines the development of "weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people." A much more evasive formulation has been adopted, with the only constraint now being to align itself with "widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."

This change by Google, a company already in the crosshairs of several antitrust investigations launched by the Democratic administration, comes as, on January 21, the day after the inauguration of the new US president, leaked documents revealed by the Washington Post suggested that some of its AI tools had been used by the Israeli army in 2024. These revelations were followed, on January 26, by a new salvo of documents, presented by several international media organizations, including the Guardian, revealing close collaboration between Microsoft and the Israeli Ministry of Defense, in the context of operations carried out in the Gaza Strip since the fall of 2023.

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