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Thank you Virkkunen, and indeed I already see some questions online,

but let's first take questions in the room. Mr President, Raziye Akkoç AFP News Agency.

I just wanted to ask you, because you mentioned in your introduction that only 13% of European businesses are using AI,

so I'd like to just know if the European Commission with this strategy

has set a target or knows how much this strategy will increase that to.

Alongside that, I'd like to know if you have any data on how much foreign reliance there is, because I kind of want to to clearly hear from you because the strategy is, while it's very detailed and,

and clear, just for Just so that I can tell my friends who don't really follow EU staff,

is this about telling European businesses to use

European AI to prioritize EU AI providers over foreigners? Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yes, the 13% figure was from last year and there was already a big increase from the one year before,

so we saw that already in last year, the use of AI was increasing,

but still it was only 13% as average.

There are big differences between the member states.

I think Denmark was leading and there are about 27% of the businesses.

People were reporting that they were using AI, and in some Member States it was only a few pros, so there were also big differences among Member States according to our statistics,

but I'm expecting that in this year it's already much higher because we know that there are more and more AI applications now in the markets,

but still we are not there where we want to be.

We have set a target in our digital decade.

A strategy that in 2030 75% of the European businesses should use AI and cloud services and that kind of new technologies and of course currently the situation is often that the businesses who are using AI are mainly using them in the office work and what we are now

targeting in this strategy is really to go to our industrial sectors and to really We comply, for example, AI together with our robotics,

and to make sure that we can be much more productive and competitive

when we are really combining our AI developers together with our traditional industries.

It's about this strategy, so we are looking at healthcare and pharma, robotics, also the transport sector, climate, environment, the energy sector,

and how we can really use in the processes AI,

not only in the office work, but it's also, of course, very beneficial.

So we are here focusing on these 11 strategic sectors, which are the sectors which were also underlined in

Draghi's report that these are very important for the European economy and Europe is very strong in this sector.

So we are focusing on now first on those.

And then the second element is about SMEs as a whole because we know that 99% of

our companies are SMEs and we know that often they don't have the same resources to understand.

We understand how they could use AI and they need much more support and here we are using our digital innovation hubs to support us.

So we have that kind of digital innovation hubs in all the member states,

to 250 of them across the European Union.

So we are covering 85% of our regions with this,

and these digital innovation hubs will really help our SMEs on the ground also to look at how they could use.

AI and they are doing this matchmaking also with our AI developers, with the European AI developers, also with our AI factories, that they can also use the computing capacity if needed,

so I see that this is very important support for our small companies, what we can offer via our digital innovation hubs,

and then we have the specific actions to these 11 strategic sectors in this strategy.

To come back on prioritizing European AI AI?

What we are doing now, for example, via our digital innovation hubs,

so there we are launching different calls for European developers,

but also, of course, all the time.

We are opening different calls, we can set it and we are

often setting it as a criteria that we should favor European solutions.

Of course, we don't always have European solutions in all technologies, but always when there is,

it's important that we are encouraging these innovations,

also via public procurement and via our calls also. Thank you. Any other questions in the room? No, then we, go online. Luca Bertalot. Good morning.

Thank you for the, for the press briefing.

I have two questions concerning the cultural sector, more specifically.

The strategy mentions that there will be a study on the legal challenges,

stemming from generative AI and copyright enforcement.

Can you tell us what is the relationship between

the study and the upcoming review of the copyright directive?

Do you envisage, reopen Opening of the Copyright Directive or targeted amendments,

as we have heard from some EU officials in the past weeks.

Secondly, the strategy mentions that the Commission plans

to support the development of pan-European platforms for media.

What sort of support do you envisage will the Commission provide the infrastructure for this platform?

Will the Commission bring together different media? Let's, what's, what's your strategy here? Thank you.

Here we have identified that the cultural and creative sector is one of our key sectors, and there we want to help also to uptake on AI, and here we have,

of course, already different programs that we can use, like a Creative Europe program and a media program there,

for example, to facilitate these new innovations in this sector.

When it comes to copyrights, we will have the review, as you know, next year,

and now we are gathering information and evidence for that review what is the

state of play with the Copyright Directive in different Member States and among stakeholders.

Personally, I see that in the Copyright Directive we are covering all the fields,

what should be covered.

Now we have to be sure that it's fully enforced and respected our copyright rules, and we see that with AI, it's often challenging, but it's a clear obligation, according to our rules,

that all the AI developers, they have to respect our copyrights,

and it's also part of our Code of Practice and the guidelines that were published in the summer. Another question online Gianni Agnelli. Hello. Here's, here's the camp.

Yeah, good morning, Jambo Ghali Blooming News. A very quick, quick question.

I was, going through the, press release, and there is a mention of,

€1 billion mobilized to encourage some of the aspects of the strategy.

Can we break it down and also explain the provenance of the funds, please?

Yes, we are investing 1 billion extra in these strategic sectors and now do these projects, what we have identified here, but of course, AI is nowadays also a very important part of our everyday work,

what we are doing in different technologies, and also in this AI for Science strategy,

there is also a plan to double the funds under Horizon.

In Europe, we are now annually using for AI,

so we are planning to double it to EUR €3 billion under the Horizon Europe program.

So we will invest more in everyday AI also, but it's also a very important part of our everyday work, as we know,

part of all the technologies, for example, also part of our defense investments we are doing now together with.

Member States, so AI and application of AI is playing a very important role in all this.

Of course, the biggest part of our AI investments is still the infrastructure part.

It's not now part of this apply AI strategy, but we are investing in our AI factories and very soon also in gigafactories,

and we are speaking about, of course, tens of billions.

Mr President, I see another question online. Oliver Grimm.

Hi, or again with the Austrian newspaper, The Presse,

you are actually throwing up the gates to the European market wide open.

You, I've had a quick look at the, at, at the communication which unfortunately we didn't get a bit earlier,

to read, but anyway, you're very optimistic and positive about artificial intelligence.

How do you prevent That this market is gonna get gobbled up by Sam Altman, by the next Chinese AI giants, by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta,

and so forth and so forth, who are already heavily lobbying the commission,

other policymakers to get a big position there.

We saw the same thing happening with solar industry, with electric cars.

The commission was very optimistic about these things, that this is the future, we're going to do everything for this to thrive,

and then in the end it was foreigners who profited and Europe that was losing out. How do you prevent that?

Don't you have to be a bit more protectionist, about the European market for AI? Thank you.

I see also that more and more industries and citizens and also governments and regions, municipalities, they are also very interested in that, from where they are buying different services and products because we,

we see that it's very important that we are,

we are independent and we have technological sovereignty and that's why it's important.

We want to boost European alternatives and support our own startups and so I'm very positive because I see that we have a very strong strong ground or

basis for our success because we have a very strong research and scientific basis

on AI and also we have 7000 startups who are developing and training AI.

So now we have to It really give a boost for those innovations, and of course our AI factories and gigafactories are very important investments in this perspective,

because often our small companies and researchers are lacking access to computing capacity,

so the infrastructure part is something that European AI developers have been lacking very much,

so we are now having very good progress on that.

And this is now the next important step that we have identified the sectors where Europe is very strong.

So we think that Europe can be very competitive when we are now putting together our traditional industries and AI developers,

because we can create new products and services and we

can be so much more productive when we are combining these. Two things.

So that's why we have now identified these sectors and especially of course I

see also that there is great potential among our SMEs on uptake of AI.

So Europe we have to build to our own strengths.

Of course the big tech, they have their own strengths, but also with our rules, with our digital Markets Act, we Also making sure that nobody shouldn't use the very dominant market position to block new innovations from the European market,

so we want to make sure that we have a fair and transparent and democratic,

safe online world also in Europe, and I think we have good rules in place to take care of that. Any other questions?

I don't see any, so with this optimistic but realistic note,

we bring an end to this press conference.

Thank you very much for your presence and availability,

and thank you for your interest and questions,

and thanks also to our interpreters. I wish you a good day.