The EU Council, which wrestled for years over whether to require message services to protect children from online predators via mandatory scanning of messages, has decided instead to propose that Parliament make chat scanning voluntary. This is prompting concern on multiple fronts, including from child advocates who fear it won’t provide child sex abuse protection and from privacy advocates worried about the risk of leaving decisions on what data to share with police and other authorities without clear guidelines.

The newly enacted law intends to keep business from using AI to personalize (and possibly raise) prices for consumers based on what they think they might pay. This has pitted business groups, including the National Retail Federation, which tried to stop its passage, against consumer and privacy advocates who believe it protects consumers from price gouging and privacy violation.