Digital identities

Commission delays high risk AI guidance

The European Commission has confirmed it will again delay publishing guidance on high-risk AI systems under the EU AI Act. The guidelines were due by 2 February 2026, but will now follow a revised timeline.

According to Euractiv, the document is intended to clarify which AI systems fall into the high-risk category and therefore face stricter obligations. Officials said more time is needed to incorporate significant stakeholder feedback.

The delay marks the second missed deadline and adds to broader implementation setbacks surrounding the EU AI Act. Several member states have yet to designate national enforcement bodies, complicating oversight preparations.

Brussels is also considering postponing the application of high-risk rules through a digital simplification package. Parliament and Council appear supportive of moving the August deadline back by more than a year, easing pressure on companies awaiting guidance.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot! 

OpenClaw users face account suspensions under Google AI rules

Google has suspended access to its Antigravity AI platform for numerous OpenClaw users, citing violations of its terms of service. Developers had used OpenClaw’s OAuth plugin to access subsidised Gemini model tokens, triggering backend strain and service degradation.

OpenClaw, launched in November 2025, gained more than 219,000 GitHub stars by enabling local AI agents for tasks such as email management and web browsing. Users authenticated through Antigravity to access advanced Gemini models at reduced cost, bypassing official distribution channels.

Google said the third-party integration powered non-authorised products on Antigravity infrastructure, triggering usage flagged as malicious. In February 2026, AI Ultra subscribers reported 403 errors and account restrictions, with some citing temporary disruptions to Gmail and Workspace.

Varun Mohan of Google DeepMind said the surge had degraded service quality and that enforcement prioritised legitimate users. Limited reinstatement options were offered to those unaware of violations, while capacity constraints were cited as the reason.

The move follows similar restrictions by Anthropic on third-party OAuth usage. Developers are shifting to alternative forks, as debate intensifies over open tooling, platform control, and the risks of agentic AI ecosystems.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech, and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!

AI drives faster modernisation of legacy COBOL systems

Critical to finance, airlines, and government, COBOL handles about 95% of US ATM transactions. Despite its ubiquity, the pool of developers able to read and maintain COBOL is shrinking as seasoned engineers retire and universities offer limited instruction.

Institutional knowledge is now embedded in decades-old code, and documentation often lags.

Modernising COBOL differs from typical software updates. It requires untangling intricate dependencies and reverse-engineering business logic that has evolved over decades.

Traditional modernisation efforts involved large teams of consultants over the years, resulting in high costs and lengthy timelines. AI tools are changing that paradigm by automating the most labour-intensive tasks.

AI-driven solutions like Claude Code map code dependencies, trace execution paths, document workflows, and identify risks. They provide teams with actionable insights for prioritisation, risk management, and refactoring, dramatically shortening modernisation timelines from years to months.

Human experts remain essential to reviewing AI recommendations, ensuring regulatory compliance, and making strategic decisions about which components to modernise first.

Implementation follows an incremental approach. AI translates COBOL logic into modern languages, creates integration scaffolding, and supports side-by-side operation with legacy components.

Continuous validation at each step reduces risk, allowing teams to build confidence as complex parts of the system are modernised. AI automation combined with expert oversight makes large-scale COBOL modernisation feasible.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot! 

Global privacy regulators warn of rising AI deepfake harms

Privacy regulators from around the world have issued a joint warning about the rise of AI-generated deepfakes, arguing that the spread of non-consensual images poses a global risk instead of remaining a problem confined to individual countries.

Sixty-one authorities endorsed a declaration that draws attention to AI images and videos depicting real people without their knowledge or consent.

The signatories highlight the rapid growth of intimate deepfakes, particularly those targeting children and individuals from vulnerable communities. They note that such material often circulates widely on social platforms and may fuel exploitation or cyberbullying.

The declaration argues that the scale of the threat requires coordinated action rather than isolated national responses.

European authorities, including the European Data Protection Board and the European Data Protection Supervisor, support the effort to build global cooperation.

Regulators say that only joint oversight can limit the harms caused by AI systems that generate false depictions, rather than protecting individuals’ privacy as required under frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!  

OCC approval moves Crypto.com closer to US trust bank

Crypto.com has secured conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to move ahead with plans to launch a federally regulated national trust bank in the United States.

Approval marks a notable step in the firm’s regulatory roadmap. It also signals continued alignment with US supervisory expectations as the digital asset sector seeks deeper integration with traditional financial infrastructure.

Plans focus on establishing Foris Dax National Trust Bank. The entity is designed to provide a consolidated suite of services, including digital asset custody, staking across multiple blockchain ecosystems such as Cronos, and trade settlement.

Full approval would place the entity under direct federal oversight, positioning it to serve institutional clients that require qualified custodians operating within a clear regulatory perimeter.

Leadership described the decision as recognition of its compliance and risk management framework. Executives said the structure would offer institutions a single regulated gateway to digital asset infrastructure and strengthen market confidence.

Existing operations at Crypto.com Custody Trust Company in New Hampshire will continue without interruption. Final authorisation will determine the timeline for launching the national trust bank and expanding federally supervised US services.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!

Anthropic uncovers large-scale AI model theft operations

Three AI laboratories have been found conducting large-scale illicit campaigns to extract capabilities from Anthropic’s Claude AI, the company revealed.

DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax used around 24,000 fraudulent accounts to generate more than 16 million interactions, violating terms of service and regional access restrictions. The technique, called distillation, trains a weaker model on outputs from a stronger one, speeding AI development.

Distilled models obtained in this manner often lack critical safeguards, creating serious national security concerns. Without protections, these capabilities could be integrated into military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber operations, potentially by authoritarian governments.

The attacks also undermine export controls designed to preserve the competitive edge of US AI technology and could give a misleading impression of foreign labs’ independent AI progress.

Each lab followed coordinated playbooks using proxy networks and large-scale automated prompts to target specific capabilities such as agentic reasoning, coding, and tool use.

Anthropic attributed the campaigns using request metadata, infrastructure indicators, and corroborating observations from industry partners. The investigation detailed how distillation attacks operate from data generation to model launch.

In response, Anthropic has strengthened detection systems, implemented stricter access controls, shared intelligence with other labs and authorities, and introduced countermeasures to reduce the effectiveness of illicit distillation.

The company emphasises that addressing these attacks will require coordinated action across the AI industry, cloud providers, and policymakers to protect frontier AI capabilities.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot! 

Medical AI risks in Turkey highlight data bias and privacy challenges

Ankara is seeing growing debate over the risks and benefits of medical AI as experts warn that poorly governed systems could threaten patient safety.

Associate professor Agah Tugrul Korucu said AI offers meaningful potential for healthcare only when supported by rigorous ethical rules and strong oversight instead of rapid deployment without proper safeguards.

Korucu explained that data bias remains one of the most significant dangers because AI models learn directly from the information they receive. Underrepresented age groups, regions or social classes can distort outcomes and create systematic errors.

Turkey’s national health database e-Nabiz provides a strategic advantage, yet raw information cannot generate value unless it is processed correctly and supported by clear standards, quality controls and reliable terminology.

He added that inconsistent hospital records, labelling errors and privacy vulnerabilities can mislead AI systems and pose legal challenges. Strict anonymisation and secure analysis environments are needed to prevent harmful breaches.

Medical AI works best as a second eye in fields such as radiology and pathology, where systems can reduce workloads by flagging suspicious areas instead of leaving clinicians to assess every scan alone.

Korucu said physicians must remain final decision makers because automation bias could push patients towards unnecessary risks.

He expects genomic data combined with AI to transform personalised medicine over the coming decade, allowing faster diagnoses and accurate medication choices for rare conditions.

Priority development areas for Turkey include triage tools, intensive care early warning systems and chronic disease management. He noted that the long-term model will be the AI-assisted physician rather than a fully automated clinician.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!  

AWS warns of AI powered cybercrime

Amazon Web Services has revealed that a Russian-speaking threat actor used commercial AI tools to compromise more than 600 FortiGate firewalls across 55 countries. AWS described the campaign as an AI-powered assembly line for cybercrime.

According to AWS, the attacker relied on exposed management ports and weak single-factor credentials rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities. The campaign targeted FortiGate devices globally and focused on harvesting credentials and configuration data.

AWS said the potentially Russian group appeared unsophisticated but achieved scale through AI-assisted mass scanning and automation. When encountering stronger defences, the attackers reportedly shifted to easier targets rather than persist.

The company advised organisations using FortiGate appliances to secure management interfaces, change default credentials and enforce complex passwords. Amazon said it was not compromised during the campaign.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot! 

Wikipedia removes Archive.today links

Wikipedia editors have voted to remove all links to Archive.today, citing allegations that the web archive was involved in a distributed denial of service attack.

Editors said Archive.today, which also operates under domains such as archive.is and archive.ph, should not be linked because it allegedly used visitors’ browsers to target blogger Jani Patokallio. The site has also been accused of altering archived pages, raising concerns about reliability.

Archive.today had previously been blacklisted in 2013 before being reinstated in 2016. Wikipedia’s latest guidance calls for replacing Archive.today links with original sources or alternative archives such as the Wayback Machine.

The apparent owner of Archive.today denied wrongdoing in posts linked from the site and suggested the controversy had been exaggerated. Wikipedia editors nevertheless concluded that readers should not be directed to a service facing such allegations.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot! 

Stanford speech warns of AI tsunami

Senator Bernie Sanders has warned at Stanford University in California that the US is unprepared for the speed and scale of the AI revolution. Speaking in California alongside Congressman Ro Khanna, he called the moment one of the most dangerous in modern US history.

At Stanford University, Sanders urged a moratorium on the expansion of AI data centres to slow development while lawmakers catch up. He argued that the American public lacks a clear understanding of the economic and social impact ahead and that New York is already considering a pause.

Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley in California, rejected a complete moratorium but called for steering AI growth through renewable energy and water efficiency standards. He outlined principles to prevent wealth from being concentrated among a small group of tech billionaires.

Sanders also raised concerns in California about job losses and emotional reliance on AI, citing projections of widespread automation. He called for a national debate in the US over whether AI will benefit the public or deepen inequality.

Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!