The European Union spent the better part of a decade building what it called the global gold standard for AI regulation and data privacy. The AI Act. The GDPR. Landmark laws that every other country benchmarked against. Now it is taking a chainsaw to both of them.

Amnesty International published a devastating analysis this week of the European Commission's so-called "Digital Omnibus" proposals. The short version: under the banner of "simplification" and "cutting red tape," the Commission is proposing sweeping changes that would weaken protections against AI discrimination, gut the GDPR's data protection guarantees, and hand Big Tech exactly what it has been lobbying for since both laws were written.

The specifics are genuinely alarming. The proposed changes would redefine what counts as personal data, making it easier for AI companies to harvest information for training. Companies would only need to remove your data from AI systems if doing so does not require "disproportionate efforts." That phrase is not defined. It will be defined by corporate lawyers, which is the point.

The AI Act changes are worse. The Commission wants to exempt certain AI systems from mandatory impact assessments and narrow the definition of "high-risk" systems. Translation: more AI deployed in sensitive areas with less oversight. The very thing the AI Act was designed to prevent.

Here is the context that makes this story bigger than a policy wonk debate. Amazon alone spent 7 million euros lobbying EU institutions last year. Big Tech has been framing regulation as anti-innovation since both laws were drafted. The Commission's "simplification" language is almost word-for-word what industry lobbyists have been pushing. Amnesty calls it "an unprecedented rollback of rights online."

The timing is not accidental. The US has no federal AI law. China regulates AI strictly but selectively. Europe was supposed to be the third path: protect people while enabling innovation. If the Commission guts its own laws before they even fully take effect, there is no third path. There is just a global race to the bottom where the companies building AI face no meaningful accountability anywhere.

The EU still has the best AI regulatory framework on paper. The question is whether it will exist anywhere but paper by the end of this year.

Source: Amnesty International analysis of the Digital Omnibus proposals.