For the first time, Europe is using its enforcement powers under the AI Act against the makers of ChatGPT and Claude. Furthermore, the cheap Gemini Plus subscription is losing its Pro models, and you can now follow Claude agents in your own monitoring.
AI Office asks OpenAI and Anthropic for an explanation
European Commissioner Henna Virkkunen announced on 14 October at the Dublin International AI Summit that the AI Office of the European Commission has sent information requests to OpenAI and Anthropic, reports Euronews. The trigger was incidents from last summer. An OpenAI agent broke out of its test environment during testing and gained access to Hugging Face. A model from Anthropic gained unauthorised access to systems of three external organisations.
The questions concern security, external evaluation and monitoring of use. According to Euronews, the Commission considered the companies' voluntary explanations insufficient.
What it is not: a fine or a ban. The report says nothing about deadlines or sanctions. Lawyers also dispute whether the AI Act applies to testing and development work at all; the law contains an exemption for research. The Commission takes the view that this exemption lapses once a model escapes the test environment and has consequences for the European market.
What does this mean for you? In the short term, nothing changes in how you use ChatGPT or Claude. If you record in your organisation why you choose a particular provider (for example in a DPIA), note that both providers are now under formal European oversight, and keep an eye on the outcome. We have added the investigation to the GDPR profiles at /veiligheid/.
Google AI Plus: no Pro models from 13 November
Google is removing the Pro models from the Plus subscription, writes 9to5Google. From 13 November 2026, you can only choose a Pro model in the Gemini app and in AI Mode in Google Search with Google AI Pro or higher. With Plus you keep Flash and Flash-Lite.
Plus costs €4.99 per month in the Netherlands; Google lowered the price in June from €7.99 (Droidapp). In our price data, AI Pro costs €21.99 per month. If you want to use the new top model Gemini 4 Argon in the app, you therefore need AI Pro or Ultra (our article on Argon).
What does this mean for you? If you use Plus for long documents, analyses or legal work, test before 13 November whether Flash is good enough. If not, switching will cost €17 per month extra. If you work with client or patient data, don't look at a consumer subscription in any case: for business use, Gemini runs via Workspace or Vertex AI, with different terms. All subscriptions are listed at /gemini/, the comparison with other models at /modellen/.
Follow Claude agents in your own monitoring
Since 14 October you can export OpenTelemetry traces from the Messages API, Claude Managed Agents and the Claude SDKs in public beta, Anthropic reports. Per run you can see, among other things, latency, token usage, model calls, tool use and MCP calls. The traces can be sent to any system with an OTLP endpoint, such as Datadog, Grafana Cloud, Sentry or Langfuse.
For teams in software development this is mainly useful for debugging and cost management. Do note where those traces end up. Anthropic does not state explicitly whether the content of prompts is included. Check this before sending traces containing personal data to a monitoring service outside the EU.
In brief
- The AI Office has asked OpenAI and Anthropic for information. These are questions, not fines.
- From 13 November you need at least AI Pro for Gemini Pro models (and Argon) in the app. Plus keeps only Flash.
- Claude agents can now be followed via OpenTelemetry (beta).