Products ranging from footwear to AI counterfeit detectors fill the halls of Paris’ Vivatech trade fair, which runs until Saturday.

Here are some of the highlights of this year's show gathered by AFP on the scene:

Anti-counterfeiting AI

For humans, spotting the difference between a Lacoste polo shirt and a fake sporting the brand's crocodile logo can be tricky.

But French startup Vrai AI believes its artificial intelligence model can tell the two apart based on a simple photo.

"AI can detect micro-mistakes" made by counterfeit manufacturers of products like off-the-rack clothes, banknotes or even anti-malarial medications, co-founder Hugo Garcia-Cotte tells AFP.

"It's more reliable than humans," he adds.

Lacoste has been testing the AI model since November, with customs services in countries like Cameroon and Senegal also taking an interest.

Robotic telemedicine

Scooting around on castor wheels, column-shaped robots from Hong Kong firm Robocore can serve as mobile advertising billboards -- but for now are mostly deployed for medical purposes in hospitals and retirement homes.

"We are in about 200 elderly homes in the United States, 1,000 elderly homes in Hong Kong, and we are in a lot of hospitals as well," boss Long Hei Roy Lim tells AFP.

The robots, each a few feet high, use AI to navigate environments autonomously, including taking the lift.

They can also analyse patients' medical data and have conversations powered by chatbots from American developer OpenAI or Chinese competitor DeepSeek.

Robocore says its robots can save time for health workers, whose workload is cut to simply checking up on what the robots have distributed to patients — hopefully limiting the impact of doctor shortages.