Regulation

Isometric illustration of European Parliament chamber with calendar pages flipping to December 2027 and an AI compliance document marked HIGH-RISK

The EU AI Act's December 2027 Delay Skips Past Most Marketing Tools

The EU Council and Parliament reached a provisional deal on May 7, 2026 pushing the AI Act's high-risk compliance deadlines to December 2, 2027 for stand-alone systems and August 2, 2028 for AI embedded in regulated products. Most marketing AI never qualified as high-risk under Annex III, so

Pop-art panel of a resetting countdown clock, a red strikethrough $3,531 price tag, and a courthouse gavel over a halftone mattress

Emma Sleep Was Fined $15M for a Countdown Timer That Quietly Reset

The Australian Federal Court ordered Emma Sleep to pay $15 million on April 24, 2026, for resetting countdown timers and displaying strikethrough prices that 58 of its 74 advertised products had never actually sold at. The conduct ran from June 2020 through March 2023 and generated more than $134 million

Isometric illustration of an FTC building seal beside a stack of strategic plan documents, a marketing funnel with warning labels, and a gavel over a keyboard.

The FTC's 5-Year Plan Reads Like a Marketing Audit. Most Teams Won't Notice.

The FTC spent two weeks telling everyone it was going to stop burdening legitimate business. Chairman Andrew Ferguson restored the phrase "without unduly burdening legitimate business activity" to the agency's mission statement and framed the whole rewrite as a course correction from overregulation. Then on April