EU to crack down on AI deepfakes, illicit imagery and hacking with new team in Brussels

The European Union has announced its masterstroke against the digital apocalypse: 38 new people. Thirty-eight. Yes, you read that correctly — thirty-eight. The AI Office in Brussels has been expanded with 38 additional staff to monitor AI companies including OpenAI and DeepSeek, because nothing says 'tech sovereignty' like assigning one soul for every ten million chat prompts. It is the sort of move that would make a Wetherspoons manager nod approvingly: clearly the plan is to overwhelm the enemy with sheer unit headcount, one moderately-paid bureaucrat at a time.

Let's savour the arithmetic. Thirty-eight new colleagues to crack down on AI deepfakes, illicit imagery and hacking across an entire continent. Unless the new team is composed entirely of retired Time Lords, they have approximately the same chance of success as a neighbourhood watch committee trying to police the whole Dark Web with a single clipboard. The 'tech sovereignty' strategy, meanwhile, is a phrase so staggeringly empty that it could serve as the EU's official response to everything from quantum computing to the weather. Since when has sovereignty ever been achieved by adding 38 people to an office that already exists?

And how will this crack team actually enforce anything? By monitoring, presumably — the Brussels equivalent of a stern look at a Very Serious Meeting, followed by a strongly-worded letter that arrives after the deepfake has gone viral, been parodied, and been replaced by three new ones. OpenAI and DeepSeek will no doubt tremble at the thought of 38 extra sets of eyes reading their terms and conditions. The hackers, I suspect, will not. Still, one must applaud the ambition: a crackdown on hacking with a team the size of a small wedding party. I'd suggest adding a DJ — at least then something in the room would be making a useful noise.