Responsible AI is the next great dividing line

Key messages: 

• Data and AI Regulations framework is critical in the evolving AI landscape to establish safety standards, protect user privacy and prevent misinformation
• Orange Business embeds rigorous governance standards, regulatory compliance and energy-efficient design directly into its enterprise solutions 
• Orange Business’ ‘responsible AI by design’ approach helps to manage risks such as bias, data misuse and high energy consumption according to AI EU Regulation. 

The EU AI Act is the first of many AI-specific regulations, demanding fairness, transparency, accountability and human oversight, while promoting responsible, sustainable AI development.  
 
Orange Business has built-in AI governance to its new five-year ‘Trust the Future’ plan to turn AI into an opportunity for enterprises to embrace AI with confidence. The scope supports customer intimacy, innovative growth and excellence at scale through better experiences, greater creativity and smarter, more efficient solutions.  

This enables enterprises to benefit from AI-powered services they can trust, while ensuring their privacy. 

Despite the business risks and increasing regulatory pressures, many organizations are struggling to translate ethical guidelines into daily operations. To tackle this, Orange Business is building trustworthy AI equally aligned with regulations and its own Data and AI Ethics Charter to ensure the highest standards.  

Orange Business embeds trust by classifying risk levels before AI deployment and through its multidisciplinary Responsible AI and Ethical Committee. Orange Business has been one of the first co-signatory of the EU AI Pact, a voluntary European Commission framework for sharing knowledge, mapping high-risk systems, and enhancing the technology’s trustworthiness.  

Responsible AI governance and Impacts Assessments are essential to prevent bias, errors and unintended harm. Orange Business seeks to raise customers' awareness of these issues against a ticking clock. By 2030, up to 20% of G1000 organizations will have faced lawsuits, substantial fines, and CIO dismissals due to high-profile disruptions stemming from inadequate controls and governance of AI agents, according to IDC.¹

Responsible AI Framework is a frontline defense against legal, financial and reputational risks, while promoting digital trust, security and fairness throughout the AI lifecycle. 

Orange Business protects customer data and ensures compliant, non-discriminatory AI, validated by the GEEIS-AI (Gender Equality Diversity European and International Standard – AI) and supported by human oversight. Alongside in-house expertise, Orange Business also draws on ISO/IEC 42001(Information technology — Artificial intelligence — Management system for Trustworthy AI) to structure its responsible AI framework with a continuous improvement of AI policies.  

Orange Business tracks AI governance through KPIs covering ethics, security and environmental impact and how they contribute to business revenues. Its governance model is constantly evolving to ensure real-time oversight and lifecycle traceability.  

Orange Business tackles critical vulnerability by combining its roles as a network operator, system integrator and platform player, using its own global backbone for end-to-end resilience and security.  

This unified infrastructure model has never been more important. Gartner predicts that 75% of enterprises outside the US will have a digital sovereignty strategy due to geopolitical factors.²

Growing public scrutiny of AI’s massive energy and water consumption requirements is putting huge pressure on organizations to justify their AI resource footprint. To put this in perspective, the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that global energy consumption for data centers could reach up to 1,700 TWh by 2035 ³. In comparison, France currently consumes 451 TWh annually.   

To this end, Orange Business is championing frugal AI by reducing data use, choosing a sustainable infrastructure, using efficient models and applying AI only where it adds value.  

Orange Business is also deploying a live carbon calculator into is Gen AI Platform solution, “Live Intelligence”, giving customers transparency on the CO2 of AI queries and supporting more sustainable AI use.  

The next dividing line in AI is less and less about technology – but between organizations that can turn AI capabilities into trusted, practical and sustainable, enterprise-wide benefits and those that cannot.  

To ensure its customers have every chance of success, Orange Business is shaping the future of ‘Trust and Sustainability’, enabling them to innovate confidently while meeting regulatory and ethical expectations.

¹ IDC Futurescape AI 2026 https://my.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS53883425 

² Stratégie de souveraineté numérique Gartner 2025 https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-11-12-gartner-survey-reveals-geopolitics-will-drive-61-percent-of-cios-and-information-technology-leaders-in-western-europe-to-increase-reliance-on-local-cloud-providers 

³ Agence internationale de l’énergie, demande énergétique liée à l’IA https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai