Bank of Italy says it is talking to the world's big AI firms

Governor Fabio Panetta used the Bank of Italy’s annual assembly to promote artificial intelligence as a potential solution to Italy’s long-running productivity stagnation. He said the central bank is already engaging with leading AI developers and has opened talks with Italian lenders about applying the technology. He framed AI’s impact in two adoption scenarios: slow adoption could lift productivity by about 0.2 percentage points per year, while rapid broad uptake could add more than a full point per year. He cited that around 30% of firms use AI in some form, but only about 5% use it intensively. He argued that closing the gap depends on capital, including deeper venture capital and private equity to help domestic AI companies scale.

"At the Bank of Italy's annual assembly on Friday, the governor said the bank is in contact with the world's leading developers of artificial intelligence and has recently opened talks with Italian lenders about putting the technology to work. The remark is a small one in the text of a long address, but it signals a posture. A central bank that names its engagement with frontier AI firms is treating the technology as something it intends to understand from the inside, rather than regulate from a distance, and it lands in a country where the biggest US labs have begun planting flags."

"Panetta's larger argument was economic. Italy has a long-running productivity problem, with output per worker that has barely grown for two decades, and he framed AI as a plausible part of the answer. Under slow adoption, he said, the technology might lift Italian productivity by 0.2 percentage points a year. Under rapid, broad uptake, it could add more than a full point a year, a difference that compounds into very different futures for an economy that has struggled to grow."

"The gap between those two scenarios is, in effect, an adoption problem, and the current numbers explain his concern. Around 30% of Italian firms use AI in some form, Panetta said, but only about 5% use it intensively. A technology can be widely sampled and barely deployed at the same time, and Italy sits squarely in that gap, which is why the difference between dabbling and committing matters so much to the figures."

"To close it, Panetta pointed to capital rather than code. Italy needs deeper venture-capital and private-equity industries, he argued, the financing layers that let domestic AI companies scale ra"

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