Valve's Steam Machine: Everything we know MetaAI is essentially the only AI assistant now available on WhatsApp. The EU could take interim measures against WhatsApp as it investigates AI providers' access to the app. On Monday, the EU's regulatory arm announced its preliminary view that Meta, WhatsApp's parent company, violated antitrust laws by blocking third-party AI assistants from operating on WhatsApp. The European Commission's is concerned that Meta's actions will limit competitors from entering the AI assistant market. We must protect effective competition in this vibrant field, which means we cannot allow dominant tech companies to illegally leverage their dominance to give themselves an unfair advantage, Teresa Ribera, executive vice-president for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition said in a statement. Ribera continued: AI markets are developing at rapid pace, so we also need to be swift in our action.

EU investigates Elon Musk's X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes The European Commission has launched an investigation into Elon Musk's X over concerns its AI tool Grok was used to create sexualised images of real people. It follows a similar announcement in January from the UK watchdog Ofcom. Regina Doherty, a member of the European parliament representing Ireland, said the Commission would assess whether manipulated sexually explicit images have been shown to users in the EU. A previous statement from X's Safety account said the social media platform had stopped Grok from digitally altering pictures of people to remove their clothing in jurisdictions where such content is illegal. But campaigners and victims said the ability to generate sexually explicit pictures using the tool should have never happened in the first place, and Ofcom said its investigation would remain ongoing.

As Europe's longstanding alliance with the US falters, its push to become a self-sufficient AI superpower has become more urgent. As the relationship between the US and its European allies shows signs of strain, AI labs across the continent are searching for inventive ways to close the gap with American rivals that have so far dominated the field. With rare exceptions, US-based firms outstrip European competitors across the AI production line--from processor design and manufacturing, to datacenter capacity, to model and application development. Likewise, the US has captured a massive proportion of the money pouring into AI, reflected in the performance last year of its homegrown stocks and the growth of its econonmy . The belief in some quarters is that the US-based leaders --Nvidia, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and the like--are already so entrenched as to make it impossible for European nations to break their dependency on American AI, mirroring the pattern in cloud services.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok has limited image generation on the social media platform X amid growing backlash over its use to create sexualised deepfakes of women and children. Grok told X users on Friday that image generation and editing features were now available only to paying subscribers. The move comes after Musk was threatened with fines and several countries pushed back publicly against the tool that allowed users to alter online images to remove the subjects' clothes. The European Commission said on Monday that such images circulating on X were unlawful and appalling. The United Kingdom's data regulator also said it had asked the platform to explain how it was complying with data protection laws following concerns that Grok was generating sexually abusive images of women.

EU flags'appalling' child-like deepfakes generated by X's Grok AI The European Commission has condemned the reported spread of explicit, child-like content on social media platform X, calling the material "appalling" and "disgusting". European Union digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier made the comments to reporters on Monday following weeks of complaints over a new feature on X's integrated AI chatbot Grok used to generate pornographic content, including depicting children. Regnier said the European Commission is "very seriously looking" into the matter, and such content has "no place in Europe". Meanwhile, the public prosecutor's office in Paris, France expanded an investigation into X to include accusations that Grok - created by Elon Musk's xAI company - has been used to generate and spread child pornography. In late December, a novel "edit image" feature on Grok allowed users to modify any image on the platform.

EU opens antitrust investigation into Google's AI practices The European Commission is looking into Google's lack of compensation for publishers and YouTube creators. Google is no stranger to scrutiny from government bodies such as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and the European Commission . Now it can add another probe to its list: The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into the company surrounding the content used for its AI tools. Namely, the Commission is looking into two things, starting with whether Google used web publisher's content for its AI Overview and AI Mode services -- without appropriate compensation or the option to refuse the use of their materials. The Commission will investigate to what extent the generation of AI Overviews and AI Mode by Google is based on web publishers' content without appropriate compensation for that, and without the possibility for publishers to refuse without losing access to Google Search, the EU executive body stated in its announcement.

Google runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet. Google runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet. EU opens investigation into Google's use of online content for AI models Tue 9 Dec 2025 05.06 ESTFirst published on Tue 9 Dec 2025 03.48 EST The EU has opened an investigation to assess whether Google is breaching European competition rules in its use of online content from publishers and YouTube creators for artificial intelligence. The European Commission said on Tuesday it will examine whether the US tech company, which runs the Gemini AI model and is owned by Alphabet, is putting rival AI owners at a "disadvantage". "The investigation will notably examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thereby placing developers of rival AI models at a disadvantage," the commission said.

The Trump administration's pressure on European regulators is having an impact, with fewer restrictions on Big Tech and canceled measures. Almost everything is on hiatus. The EU AI Act, Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act are all at risk. The European Commission is preparing to end the year with virtually no movement on its most important tech policy initiatives. Many measures may even be reversed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) now permeates critical infrastructures and decision-making systems where failures produce social, economic, and democratic harm. This position paper challenges the entrenched belief that regulation and innovation are opposites. As evidenced by analogies from aviation, pharmaceuticals, and welfare systems and recent cases of synthetic misinformation, bias and unaccountable decision-making, the absence of well-designed regulation has already created immeasurable damage. Regulation, when thoughtful and adaptive, is not a brake on innovation -- it is its foundation. The present position paper examines the EU AI Act as a model of risk-based, responsibility-driven regulation that addresses the Collingridge Dilemma: acting early enough to prevent harm, yet flexibly enough to sustain innovation. Its adaptive mechanisms -- regulatory sandboxes, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) support, real-world testing, fundamental rights impact assessment (FRIA) -- demonstrate how regulation can accelerate responsibly, rather than delay, technological progress. The position paper summarises how governance tools transform perceived burdens into tangible advantages: legal certainty, consumer trust, and ethical competitiveness. Ultimately, the paper reframes progress: innovation and regulation advance together. By embedding transparency, impact assessments, accountability, and AI literacy into design and deployment, the EU framework defines what responsible innovation truly means -- technological ambition disciplined by democratic values and fundamental rights.

Citiverses hold the potential to support regulatory learning by offering immersive, virtual environments for experimenting with policy scenarios and technologies. This paper proposes a science-for-policy agenda to explore the potential of citiverses as experimentation spaces for regulatory learning, grounded in a consultation with a high-level panel of experts, including policymakers from the European Commission, national government science advisers and leading researchers in digital regulation and virtual worlds. It identifies key research areas, including scalability, real-time feedback, complexity modelling, cross-border collaboration, risk reduction, citizen participation, ethical considerations and the integration of emerging technologies. In addition, the paper analyses a set of experimental topics, spanning transportation, urban planning and the environment/climate crisis, that could be tested in citiverse platforms to advance regulatory learning in these areas. The proposed work is designed to inform future research for policy and emphasizes a responsible approach to developing and using citiverses. It prioritizes careful consideration of the ethical, economic, ecological and social dimensions of different regulations. The paper also explores essential preliminary steps necessary for integrating citiverses into the broader ecosystems of experimentation spaces, including test beds, living labs and regulatory sandboxes