In December 2018, two documents central for the European Union’s artificial intelligence policy were released: A Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence by the European Commission, and the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence’s Draft Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI.  These two documents are both an internal signal to the member states, but also an international sign about the role the EU aspires to take within the emerging AI development. Moreover, the documents are the research material used for this paper. The question this thesis seeks to answer is: “What role(s) does the European Union aspire to take in the global rise of AI?” The question will be answered by utilizing role theory. The study is conducted by carrying out a qualitative manifest content analysis with deductive approach. The main finding of this study is that the EU’s AI policy reflects the roles the EU has traditionally taken, referring to civilian power, soft power and normative power as roles. The normative power seems to, however, be the dominating role conception within the AI policy.