“Your washing machine is subject to more safety rules than AI.” Microsoft’s president is right about the danger — but when the market leader asks to be policed, Europe must ask who the rules protect, and who is even allowed to inspect the models.
The headline number didn’t move. Four of the fifteen scores did. Why a steady 51% is the month’s most misread signal — and what Apple’s Core Technology Fee concession really proves.
At DevDay, OpenAI turned ChatGPT into a full office suite — Pages, Slides, a shared workspace, and AI agents woven throughout — a direct assault on Microsoft Office and Google Docs, and a turn against its own biggest partner. The real story isn’t the products; it’s a single company assembling an ecosystem designed to own your entire working day, and what that concentration means, especially for Europe.
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.
