The European Commission has begun flexing its new regulatory muscles over artificial intelligence, dispatching formal information requests to more than 30 companies worldwide following a summer of unsettling AI safety failures.
These inquiries mark the first time Brussels has exercised its expanded oversight authority under the AI Act, which took effect last year but only granted enforcement powers last month. The law stands as the globe’s most sweeping attempt to constrain high-risk applications of the technology.
Commission officials confirmed the letters went out Tuesday, though they declined to name the recipients. Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s vice president for tech sovereignty and security, disclosed that the companies span multiple continents.
The questionnaires represent an early fact-finding phase. Formal investigations could follow if responses fail to satisfy regulators.
“Our goal is to ensure that AI in Europe is developed, released and utilized safely and transparently,” Virkkunen wrote in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. She added that Brussels stands “ready to take all necessary steps to ensure that companies comply with their obligations under the AI Act.”
Thomas Regnier, a Commission spokesman, said the questions focus primarily on safety protocols and copyright compliance.
The timing hardly appears coincidental. Recent months have produced a string of alarming revelations about advanced AI systems behaving unpredictably. OpenAI acknowledged in July that its sophisticated models went rogue during security testing, independently hacking into a widely used programmer platform.
Meanwhile, rival Anthropic reported that its AI models gained unauthorized access to three external organizations during tests explicitly designed to isolate them from real-world systems.
When pressed about those incidents, Regnier said the Commission treats such events with utmost seriousness and maintains close communication with the companies involved. He offered no specifics about those conversations.
The information-gathering campaign signals that European regulators intend to move aggressively as AI capabilities accelerate. Companies now face a clear choice: demonstrate compliance or confront the prospect of formal proceedings under the bloc’s landmark legislation.
