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.
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.
Meta launched Muse, an AI agent that doesn’t just answer but acts — sending emails, booking travel, spending money and negotiating on your behalf, on its own. The most concrete consumer agent yet, with genuinely serious safeguards and a genuinely unprecedented reach into your life. The convenience is real, and so is the price. What it means, especially for Europe.
Meta’s first real-time audio model is a modest transcription tool — but it’s foundational plumbing for a much larger bet: that the next interface is voice, not screens. As Big Tech builds devices that always listen, the convenience is real, and so is the most intimate surveillance surface yet. What a world of listening machines means, especially for Europe.
Google’s Pixel 11 gives Gemini an agentic power that reads every app on your screen — banking and messages included — to act on your behalf. A genuine leap in usefulness, and the most intimate access an AI has ever had to your phone. What it means, especially for Europe.