The year 2024 has reshuffled the cards in the technology sector on several simultaneous fronts. Between the entry into force of the European regulation on artificial intelligence, the soaring electricity consumption of data centers, and the adoption of a directive on the right to repair, the tech trends of 2024 involve industrial, energy, and legal trade-offs whose effects will unfold over several years.
European Regulation on AI: A Legal Framework Redefining the Market
The European regulation on artificial intelligence (AI Act) came into force on August 1, 2024. Its implementation is staggered: some prohibitions and obligations took effect before the rules targeting high-risk classified systems. This gradual entry into force changes the game for companies developing or deploying AI solutions on European soil.
Specifically, providers of generative AI models must now comply with transparency requirements. Systems used in recruitment, credit scoring, or real-time biometric surveillance are subject to specific restrictions. For software publishers and integrators, this imposes a mapping of uses, enhanced technical documentation, and, in some cases, compliance audits.
What distinguishes this text from previous regulations is its risk-based approach. Not all AI applications are treated the same way. A customer service chatbot is not subject to the same constraints as a judicial scoring tool.
This granularity forces each company to precisely qualify its own uses, which represents a project in itself. Those following tech news on Mega REF have observed that this regulatory dimension now occupies as much space as technical announcements in the sector’s news.
Electricity Consumption of Data Centers: The Hidden Cost of Generative AI
The rise of generative AI has an energy price rarely highlighted in marketing presentations. According to the International Energy Agency, data centers consumed about 415 TWh in 2024. The projection is clear: this demand could more than double by 2030.
To give a sense of scale, this consumption exceeds that of many individual European countries. Each query addressed to a large language model mobilizes significantly more computing power than a standard web search. Multiplied by hundreds of millions of daily users, the energy bill becomes a strategic parameter.
Tensions on Electrical Infrastructure
Several regions of the world are facing difficulties connecting new data centers to the grid. Projects have been delayed or resized due to a lack of available electrical capacity. This physical constraint could slow the deployment of certain AI applications, regardless of their technical maturity.
Cloud giants are investing in dedicated energy sources (nuclear, solar, wind) to secure their supply. The question is no longer whether AI consumes a lot of energy, but whether the global electrical infrastructure can keep pace with demand. Data is still lacking on the exact share of generative AI in this increase, as operators do not always break down their figures by type of workload.
Right to Repair: The European Directive Adopted in 2024
The European directive on the right to repair was adopted in June 2024. It establishes a common framework aimed at promoting the repair of consumer goods, including electronic devices. Its implementation involves transposing it into the national law of each member state.
For the technology sector, the implications are concrete:
- Manufacturers of smartphones, tablets, and laptops will have to guarantee access to spare parts and repair information for a minimum duration after market launch.
- Design practices that intentionally make repair difficult (excessive gluing, soldered components without technical necessity) could be challenged on a common legal basis.
- An independent repair market, long hindered by manufacturers’ restrictions, could be structured at the European level.
This directive is part of a broader trend of sustainable technology and combating planned obsolescence. It potentially alters the renewal cycles of devices, affecting both consumers and manufacturers’ business strategies.
Generative AI and Companies: Beyond the Hype
Generative AI has dominated tech news since late 2022. In 2024, the topic has shifted from discovery to operational integration. Companies that have tested text, code, or image generation assistants are now facing scaling questions.
Concrete Limits of Deployment
Several barriers persist. The reliability of responses produced by language models remains a documented issue: factual hallucinations, biases reproduced from training data, difficulty in ensuring the confidentiality of data injected into prompts. For regulated sectors (health, finance, law), these limits make the autonomous deployment of generative AI premature without human supervision.
The cost of operation is another underestimated parameter. Access licenses to the APIs of large models represent a significant budget item, especially for SMEs. Some companies have chosen smaller models trained on industry-specific data to control both costs and the relevance of results.
The year 2024 will thus mark a transition: technology is no longer a curiosity but a tool whose adoption depends on very tangible economic, legal, and energy constraints. The most structuring tech trends are not always the most spectacular; they are those that permanently alter the conditions under which companies operate.
