Integrating AI in Lyon, one trade at a time

Professional and service firms: which uses of AI at Part-Dieu?

Office uses where time counts: meeting notes, first drafts of proposals, searching past files. Professional secrecy sets the limits from the audit onwards.

ONLYLYON Invest presents Part-Dieu as the second-largest business district in France. Accounting, consulting, engineering, recruitment, insurance: these trades sell skilled time, and part of it goes into formatting. AI can summarise a client meeting, structure a memo from a recording, or suggest the outline of a proposal based on earlier ones.

Before that, two decisions. First, what the tool is allowed to see: the CNIL, the French data protection authority, recommends banning the entry of certain confidential or personal data and training users on the system’s limits. Second, the contract binding you to the provider: if it processes data on your behalf, it acts as a processor, and the CNIL lists the mandatory clauses of that contract, from its purpose to the duration of processing. Our comparison Claude or ChatGPT for business helps you choose the plan.

Lyon shops and brands: AI for customer service, with what precautions?

An assistant can handle questions about delivery, returns and sizing, as long as it reads your own rules and hands over to a person. It never announces a delivery time in the carrier’s place.

For a brand selling online, the peak comes at the end of the year, when the team is packing parcels and messages pile up in the evening. We link the assistant to order tracking in read-only mode, write the triggers for handing over to a person and review its conversations with you during the first weeks.

The typical mistakes are detailed in our journal, in French. The shop itself falls under our online store offer, and our article on a website, an online store or an app helps you decide what you actually need.

Health and life sciences: why take extra care?

Because the data at stake is often health data or industrial secrets. The first uses stay internal, well away from patient records.

The Lyonbiopôle Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes competitiveness cluster, on avenue Tony Garnier, covers biotech, medtech and digital health, and counts AI in healthcare among its themes. Some of its members design AI themselves; that is not what we do. We work on the everyday use of off-the-shelf tools by their teams: literature monitoring, drafting files, preparing presentations, with strict rules on what goes into the tool.

For a medical practice or a care centre, the question of certified hosting for health data arises as soon as an assistant might receive any: that is decided before the first test, not after. A young company in the sector setting up its image will also find our guide to brand identity essentials useful.

Does a start-up that puts AI into its product have the same obligations?

Not quite: by offering its customers a conversational service built on a model, it often takes on the role of provider within the meaning of the EU AI Act. It is then up to the start-up to design how users are informed.

French Tech Saint-Étienne Lyon is one of the French Tech capitals awarded the label for 2026-2028 by the Mission French Tech, and many young companies in the metropolitan area are adding an AI feature to their software. The European Commission distinguishes the provider, who must design a conversational system so that users know they are interacting with an AI, from the deployer, who uses it in their own activity. The same company can be one for its product and the other for its internal tools.

For these projects, integration goes through the API, with an architecture that allows switching models without starting over, a log of conversations and tracking of usage costs. Development falls under our apps and software offer, which also helps you choose between a mobile app and a web app.

How do you train teams spread across several sites?

With a kick-off workshop on site, then short video sessions built on each department’s tasks. A one-page policy serves as the shared reference.

When teams are split between Part-Dieu, Gerland, Vaise or the western suburbs, bringing them together every week is not realistic. We open the project with a day at your premises, with management and a few volunteers, then train department by department remotely, on cases drawn from their own work.

On the regulatory side, the AI literacy obligation in Article 4 of the EU AI Act has applied since February 2025. The Commission states that measures must take account of each person’s knowledge and the context of use, and that an internal record of training can be kept. We give you the materials and attendance lists to build it.

What exactly do we do, from audit to follow-up?

We handle everything, from listing the tasks to fine-tuning the tool after a few weeks of use. You approve each stage in writing.

For the general approach, see our guide on what to automate in your business. If your local visibility needs to keep pace, our local SEO in Lyon page takes over.

• Audit: a typical week observed with you, department by department
• Test bench: Claude and ChatGPT compared on your real, anonymised documents
• Connections: calendar, quotes, CRM and messaging linked through our automation and tools offer
• Training: written materials for each department and examples drawn from your business
• Follow-up: reviewing a sample of conversations, adjusting instructions and access rights