Source: Politico
The European Union’s executive, legislative, and council bodies are drawing a hard line against synthetic media in their own internal operations, treating AI-generated visuals as unsuitable for institutional credibility. This reveals anxiety about authenticity and liability rather than principled technology governance. The EU itself is refusing to trust its own staff with AI tools, which suggests the institutions see real risks in attribution, manipulation, and public legitimacy that their emerging AI Act doesn’t yet resolve. The ban exposes a gap between the EU’s ambition to lead global AI governance and its actual confidence in the technology’s safety for even low-stakes use cases like communications.