European Parliament Restricts AI Use on Official Devices
The European Parliament has disabled built‑in artificial intelligence features on work‑issued mobile devices used by Members of the European Parliament and staff. The decision follows an internal assessment that identified unresolved risks related to data security, privacy, and the lack of transparency in cloud‑based AI processing. Features such as writing assistants, text summarization, virtual assistants, and web page summaries were deemed incompatible with the handling of confidential legislative and administrative information.
According to the Parliament’s IT services, these native AI functions rely on off‑device cloud processing, making it impossible to fully control how sensitive data is transmitted, stored, or reused. In an institutional environment where draft legislation, political negotiations, and internal communications circulate daily, even limited exposure outside secured systems was considered unacceptable. The measures apply only to built‑in AI features on Parliament‑issued smartphones and tablets, not to standard productivity applications.
The internal guidance goes further by advising lawmakers and staff to review AI settings on their personal devices. It warns against AI tools that analyze emails, documents, or other work‑related content and urges caution when granting broad data access to third‑party applications. This reflects a practical acknowledgment that professional and private digital environments are often intertwined, increasing institutional risk beyond officially managed hardware.
This move fits within a broader EU pattern of precaution, following earlier restrictions on platforms such as TikTok and ongoing debates on digital sovereignty and dependence on non‑EU technology providers. It also highlights a central tension in EU digital policy: while the EU AI Act seeks to promote trustworthy and regulated AI use, public institutions remain cautious in deploying AI internally where control and accountability cannot be fully ensured.
