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Europe’s top tech official says the bloc’s AI rules can handle rogue AI. Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s technology chief, pushed back hard against critics who say the AI Act is already obsolete — and she’s not backing down.
Why It Matters
The endorsement of the AI Act by the EU's tech chief underscores the region's commitment to establishing stringent regulations in the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. As concerns about rogue AI proliferate among companies, the robustness of the EU's regulatory framework may influence global standards and encourage other jurisdictions to adopt similar measures, thereby impacting investment and innovation in the AI sector. This regulatory clarity could also shape how companies approach AI development, balancing innovation with ethical considerations and public safety.
Virkkunen’s position is pretty clear: the AI Act, which has been in force for two years now, is among the toughest AI frameworks anywhere in the world. It covers the full lifecycle of AI models, from development through deployment, and regulators have been drawing on recommendations from a panel of 60 AI experts to guide their enforcement approach. She believes that’s enough — for now — to keep advanced AI systems from spiraling beyond human control.
Not everyone agrees.
Anthropic’s CEO Raises the Alarm
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, laid out his concerns in a blog post that’s been circulating widely. His worry isn’t abstract. He wrote that the speed of AI advancement might surpass human understanding and control — a scenario driven largely by recursive self-improvement, where AI systems essentially upgrade their own successors without people in the loop. That’s a pretty unsettling idea, and it’s not coming from a fringe voice. Amodei runs one of the most closely watched AI labs on the planet.
The concerns at Anthropic didn’t come out of nowhere either. Incidents at both OpenAI and Anthropic have already raised alarms about AI agents potentially exceeding human control. The specifics of those incidents weren’t fully detailed in official communications, but they were enough to put regulators in Brussels on alert. And that alert translated into action fast.
Since late August, the European Commission has been reaching out to more than 30 AI companies, asking them to hand over detailed safety and security information. Virkkunen is currently going through those responses. What she finds — or doesn’t find — could shape the next round of regulatory moves across the continent.
What 30 Companies Had to Hand Over
The data collection effort is basically a stress test. The Commission wants to know how these firms are actually managing risk, not just what they say in press releases. Are they running internal red-teaming exercises? Do they have containment protocols if a model behaves unexpectedly? Are their safety teams resourced properly? The answers to those questions will tell Brussels a lot about where the gaps are.
And there are probably gaps. The AI sector moves fast — faster, arguably, than any regulatory body can comfortably track. The EU’s AI Act was designed with that problem in mind, but even its architects can’t be certain it covers every scenario that a self-improving AI system might create. That’s the honest reality, and Virkkunen seems aware of it even if she’s publicly confident.
She’s also been clear that the dialogue between regulators and industry isn’t a one-time event. It’s ongoing. The feedback coming in from these 30-plus companies will feed directly into future regulatory decisions. That’s a sensible model, but it depends heavily on companies being candid — which isn’t guaranteed when there’s commercial pressure to appear safer than you might actually be.
The broader tension here is real. Europe wants to be a global leader in AI governance, and the AI Act is its main instrument for doing that. But the act can only work if it keeps pace with what’s actually happening inside these labs. Recursive self-improvement, as Amodei described it, is the kind of development that can make a two-year-old regulation feel ancient almost overnight.
Regulation Versus the Speed of the Machine
It’s worth stepping back for a second. The AI Act covering the full lifecycle of models is genuinely ambitious. Most regulatory frameworks focus on outputs — what a system does once it’s deployed. Covering the entire lifecycle means regulators can, at least in theory, intervene earlier. That’s a meaningful structural advantage.
But structure only matters if enforcement keeps up. The 60-expert panel feeding guidance to regulators is a solid foundation. Whether those experts can stay current with developments at the frontier labs — labs that are themselves struggling to fully understand what their systems are doing — is a harder question. Unclear, honestly.
Virkkunen’s review of the company submissions is the immediate next step. The outcomes of that assessment could push the Commission toward tightening certain provisions, requesting additional disclosures, or in more serious cases, taking enforcement action against firms that can’t demonstrate adequate safety protocols. No timeline for completing that review has been made public.
What’s not in doubt is the urgency. The incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic were enough to trigger a formal information-gathering campaign across more than 30 firms. That’s not a minor bureaucratic exercise. That’s Brussels treating rogue AI as a live risk, not a theoretical one.
Virkkunen is currently reviewing the responses from those companies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the EU AI Act and how long has it been in force?
The EU AI Act is a regulation covering the entire lifecycle of AI models, designed to manage risks from artificial intelligence. It has been in effect for two years.
Why did the European Commission contact more than 30 AI companies?
Since late August, the Commission requested detailed safety and security information from over 30 AI companies following concerns about AI agents potentially exceeding human control, including incidents at OpenAI and Anthropic.
