Siri co-creator Dr. Luc Julia will headline the Global Travel Futures Forum in Paris on October 29, as senior leaders from travel, technology, government, finance and academia gather to examine how competing artificial intelligence systems could reshape the global travel economy.

Organised by the Global Resilience Network (GRN) with Atout France, the European Travel Commission, European Tourism Association and Sorbonne University, the two-day Forum on 28 and 29 October will bring approximately 250 leaders together to explore a world in which the United States, Europe, China, the Middle East and India are developing distinct AI ecosystems.

The Forum's central focus will not be on identifying a single winning AI model, but on how travel organisations and travellers can operate across systems with different approaches to innovation, sovereignty, data, trust and scale.

Julia, a pioneer in AI and connected devices and co-creator of Siri, will deliver the opening keynote at the Hôtel de l'Industrie on 29 October.

He is also a former Chief Scientific Officer at Renault Group, where he deployed what was described as the world's first in-car LLM avatar, and former CTO and SVP of Innovation at Samsung.

In his keynote, AI Without the Hype: What Artificial Intelligence Can and Cannot Do, Julia will challenge exaggerated claims about machine intelligence and examine the boundaries between technological capability and human responsibility.

He will then join BBC presenter Rajan Datar, host of the Forum, for a conversation.

“If I had to say something nowadays, that would be “Breathe, AI isn’t going to kill us”, but also “Be afraid of ourselves, not of AIs” – Dr. Luc Julia

Travel will provide a key test of how competing AI ecosystems interact. A single international journey can involve airlines, airports, rail networks, hotels, payment systems, identity checks and digital platforms across multiple countries.

As AI agents increasingly search, plan, book, pay and manage disruptions on behalf of travellers, the Forum will examine who controls an increasingly fragmented journey, who owns traveller identity and data across borders, and how competing AI agents, payment systems and mobility networks can communicate.

“AI is not arriving as one global system with one set of rules,” said Laurie Myers, CEO and Global Strategist of the Global Resilience Network. “Travel cannot prepare for only one future. Resilience will depend on operating across competing ecosystems while protecting trust and human agency. Paris puts those futures side by side and asks what leaders must do now.”

The Forum's signature session, You've Only Seen One Future: Five AI Pathways Meet in Paris, will compare developments across the United States, Europe and the UK, China, the Middle East and India.

Subsequent sessions will examine the implications for identity, payments, mobility, interoperability, data governance, ethics and human agency.

Confirmed speakers include European Travel Commission CEO Eduardo Santander, European Commission Tourism Unit Director General Maximilian Strotmann, European Tourism Association CEO Tom Jenkins and Atout France CEO Adam Oubieh.

Representatives from Alibaba and Fliggy, BCG, HBX Group, Caisse des Dépôts, Alibaba Cloud and Sabre are also scheduled to participate.

The Forum comes as AI adoption varies considerably across Europe. European Commission data cited by GRN put enterprise AI use in the EU at 13.5 per cent in 2024, while Eurostat's 2025 survey places adoption at 20 per cent, ranging from 42 per cent in Denmark to 5.2 per cent in Romania.

The programme begins on 28 October at Sorbonne University with an academic and intergenerational event focused on AI, traveller behaviour, the future workforce and tourism in 2030, including findings from a Generation Z survey.

The Paris Forum forms part of GRN's wider international AI programme, following discussions on Chinese AI systems with the European Travel Commission and Atout France, a visit to Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou in May 2026 and executive sessions at Arabian Travel Market in Dubai.

The programme will continue at World Travel Market London from November 3 to 5 and return to China in May 2027. -TradeArabia News Service