DPC fines Google €403m over Web & App Activity, Location History, Location Accuracy
The DPC's fourth-largest fine to date covers three Google features processing location data between May 2018 and February 2020, finding failures on lawfulness, fairness, transparency and retention limits — people could be profiled and targeted with ads without ever realising their location was the input. For anyone running location-aware features through an AI pipeline (personalisation, agentic assistants, ad targeting), the practical read is that burying the processing in a privacy policy does not satisfy transparency, and indefinite or undefined retention needs an active, documented justification. Coming weeks after the DPC's HSE decision, this confirms a tightening enforcement posture: audit consent flows and retention schedules now rather than at the next scheduled DPIA cycle.
Commission proposes EU KIDS Act: AI chatbots and companions must be off by default for minors
Alongside the expected minimum age of 15 for social media accounts, the proposal reaches further into AI product design: chatbots and AI companions must ship off by default for under-18 users and are barred from features that foster emotional dependency, and very large platforms lose profiling-based recommender feeds, infinite scroll and other addictive-design patterns for that age group. Enforcement follows the DSA playbook — mandatory compliance plans, independent audits, and fines up to 6% of global annual turnover. For any client building or deploying a consumer-facing chatbot or companion product with an EU user base that includes minors, this is a new, freestanding compliance layer on top of the AI Act and DSA; it is still a Commission proposal moving through Parliament and Council, not yet binding law, but the design requirement (default-off, no dependency-fostering UX) should be scoped into product roadmaps now.
Source: European Commission
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Begin in writing →This briefing is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an advisor–client relationship. Summaries are original; follow source links for the full record. Adesanya AI Advisory — Abdulwahab B. Adesanya, Barrister-at-Law (Nigeria).