EU Chief Warns of AI-Powered Hacking, Moves to Rein In Social Media

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen used a 2026 State of the Union address to warn that advancing frontier and self-improving AI models will materially increase cyber risk, citing recent incidents (including an autonomous agent breach of Hugging Face and misuse of Anthropic models) and urging stronger guardrails. The address pairs that cybersecurity warning with a proposed EU "Kids Act" to limit minors' access to social media and AI chatbots; the report advises EU-facing platforms, game studios, and AI vendors to prepare for new age-verification, safe-by-design, and compliance obligations while treating AI-assisted intrusion as an emerging planning assumption.