Europe’s new EU Kids Act does what no major jurisdiction has: it puts AI chatbots in the same regulatory cage as social media, switching them off by default for children and banning them from creating emotional dependency. The boldest child-safety proposal yet — a direct strike at the AI companion — resting on the one problem no one has solved: age verification.
WARNING TWO. Three weeks ago we warned where AI was heading. Now the warning comes from inside: the builders themselves are begging it to slow down — one even asked Congress if pausing would be legal — and the machine won’t stop. The real danger was never a malevolent mind. It’s a human race no human controls. And the only ones left who can reach for the brake are us.
Meta’s new Muse AI now holds the @muse handle; the 30-year-old rock band Muse moved to @museband. Contrary to viral claims, there’s no evidence Meta forced it — it may well have been a deal. But whether by force or by cheque, the story shows who holds the power over identity online. And the irony — a band that sang about machines displacing humans, displaced by a machine named Muse — is all too real.
OpenAI, long a regulation skeptic, now asks the US for binding AI safety rules — the very framework Europe built and was mocked for. A genuine vindication of the European approach. But the rules OpenAI favours are capability-based, which critics warn could entrench the dominant labs. Take the vindication, then read the fine print.
Mistral raised €3 billion — the largest equity round in European tech history — to build sovereign AI on European soil. After a month of arguing that Europe regulates but doesn’t build, here’s the counter-evidence. Genuinely good news, and, against OpenAI’s €852 billion, still a minnow. The gap, not the record, is the real story.