As is tradition, the CPDP.ai 2025 conference will set off with the Opening Night – an evening of reflection, debate, and reconnecting with one another. The Opening Night will take place on Tuesday, 20 May at 18:00 in the Grande Halle at Maison de la Poste.  

The evening will open with James Bridle, author of New Dark Age (2018) and Ways of Being (2022), and the artistic visionary behind this year’s CPDP.ai cover art, whose work explores the more-than-human world and prompts reflection on how shared existence might reshape legal and regulatory thinking. 

He will be followed by a keynote address from Mireille Hildebrandt, Emeritus Professor at VUB and a visionary legal scholar whose work has shaped both the Law, Science, Technology & Society (LSTS) research group and the CPDP community over many years. Her keynote will reflect on the race towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the Brussels Effect of the GDPR and AI Act, and the importance of privacy for constitutional democracy. 

The discussion will continue with a panel discussion moderated by Gianclaudio Malgieri (Universiteit Leiden, NL), joined by Mireille Hildebrandt (Emeritus Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, BE), Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell Tech, USA), Cornelia Kutterer (MIAI - Université Grenoble Alpes, FR), and Bart Jacobs (Radboud Universiteit, NL). 

To round up the evening, we invite you to the cocktail reception in Maison de la Poste provided by Brussels Privacy Hub and Privacy Salon. 

Registration for CPDPai2025 will open at 16:00 in front of Maison de la Poste, inside Gare Maritime (Rue Picard 7, 1000 Bruxelles). We invite you to join us there to collect your badge and prepare for the evening’s programme. Registering before the Opening Night will also help you avoid the very long queues on Wednesday morning.