by Raphael Dudler | Sep 22, 2026 | gafam watch
An AI chatbot, helping write a US military intelligence report, hallucinated that a Chinese ship carried nuclear weapons components. Troops suited up, warplanes took off, and the world came within minutes of a US-China clash — stopped only because a few experienced humans checked the sources. The real danger of AI, made concrete: not malice, but a confident error trusted too far. And the kill chain is the one domain no one regulates.
by Raphael Dudler | Sep 21, 2026 | microsoft ai
In public, Big Tech calls AI training on copyrighted work fair use. In private, unsealed court filings reveal a senior Microsoft scientist called it “perhaps the largest theft of labor in human history,” while an OpenAI exec called its own models an “existential threat” to publishers. The gap between the podium and the memo — and why Europe’s permission-first approach suddenly looks like foresight.
by Raphael Dudler | Sep 18, 2026 | europe & ai
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.
by Raphael Dudler | Sep 12, 2026 | europe & ai
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.
by Raphael Dudler | Sep 11, 2026 | europe & ai
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.
