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EU Prepares to Gut AI Safety Rules Whilst Deepfake Fraud Explodes 500%

ended 10. November 2025

Where's the line between "business-friendly" and leaving citizens defenceless against the relentless pace of technological change?

Brussels is set to water down its landmark AI Act on 19 November, bowing to pressure from Trump's administration and Big Tech lobbying, despite having spent €151 million annually on influence operations, a 50% increase in four years. 

The proposed changes include a one-year "grace period" for companies breaching high-risk AI rules and delaying transparency violation fines until August 2027. 

Under a draft proposal reviewed by the Financial Times, companies that have deployed igh-risk AI systems could receive a one-year “grace period” before enforcement begins. The delay would allow firms to make adjustments “without disrupting the market,” according to the draft document. The proposal, which remains under internal discussion within the Commission and with EU member states, could still be amended before its expected adoption on November 19.

The timing couldn't be more catastrophic. Deepfake fraud surged 500% in 2025 compared to last year, with documented financial losses exceeding £900 million by mid-year alone. One in four adults has now experienced AI voice scams, with fraudsters needing just three seconds of audio to create 85% accurate voice clones. DeepStrike

Trump's Vice President JD Vance warned Europe that "excessive regulation" could cripple innovation, framing deregulation as necessary for the "global AI arms race with China". Yet whilst politicians chase competitive fantasies, real humans lose life savings to AI-generated Brad Pitt, fake CEOs, and cloned family members in distress. 95 of corporate pilots aiming to embed AI in business processes have failed, according to an MIT study.

The EU AI Act was the world's first comprehensive AI framework, banning social scoring, real-time facial recognition, and imposing strict rules on high-risk systems in healthcare, policing, and employment. It set the global standard. until corporate America decided those standards were inconvenient.

We want your views:

  • Is weakening AI safety regulation during a fraud epidemic a sensible policy for any nation?
  • Should "innovation" overtake human protections when deepfakes are costing nearly a billion pounds every six months?
  • What's the real cost of this regulatory retreat to public trust in digital systems?
  • If Europe abandons safety standards, who sets the global baseline, or do we all just accept the Wild West is here to stay?
  • Are we witnessing the Brussels Effect in reverse, American deregulation helicoptered to Europe?

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
Whilst Brussels caves to billionaire pressure and Trump threatens tariffs, small businesses are getting absolutely hammered between market chaos and AI snake oil. Tech billionaires spending millions on lobbying get grace periods for questionable and over-reaching AI in healthcare, policing and employment. Meanwhile, we're still dealing with small businesses slow off the mark and the flat-squirrel technophobes out there who can't make sense of it and hope they survive the blast. The world thought the EU was showing the way to protect ordinary people whilst this technology seeps into everything. Our uncertain times just got a lot more uncertain.
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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Managing Director & IFA at Mather and Murray Financial
The EU was trying to push water upstream with this legislation, and had no other option but to change its severity as it would have left European businesses behind and added no real protection in a globally connected world. With deep fakes around everyone virtual corner, we all have a responsibility to ask one further question when dealing with online safety. Fee fakes are here to stay, and are getting more and more real. With the improvement of technology reaching a new pace, the dynamic of who takes responsibility is shifting- more and more onto the consumer.
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Rob Mansfield
Independent Financial Advisor at Rootes Wealth Management
A.I. is a rapidly developing wild west and governments are often too slow at catching up with technology. It would take a concerted global effort to clamp down on deep fakes as if the EU or any nation is tight on this, there will be somewhere else that the scammers move to. The odds of that coordinated action seem pretty low. I think we have to accept and be cautious. Protect yourself by questioning, verifying and double-checking everything.
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Pete Mugleston
Mortgage Advisor & Managing Director at onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk
With tech giants like META signalling their friendliness toward AI-generated content, it's right that the EU looks to regulate to protect people from deepfakes that are indistinguishable from reality.

That being said, they risk regulating themselves out of global competitiveness. I think a grace period for companies that breach rules to respond to problems as they arise strikes a good balance.