Ulf Aslak Lai
Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer
Ulf is Co-founder and CTO at Lawcel. He leads engineering architecture for connectors, analysis pipelines, and the safeguards needed when automation touches regulated customer content.
- Platform architecture
- Data governance
- ML/AI systems
Articles by Ulf Aslak Lai
A user ID that never changes keeps data personal under GDPR, even if hashed
Italy's data protection authority fined IQVIA 7 million euros for treating a patient database as anonymous when each pa…
11 Oct 2026
BBVA fined 5.5 million euros after an app opt-out never reached its marketing tool
Italy's data protection authority fined BBVA 5,508,000 euros after a customer switched off promotional notifications in…
10 Oct 2026
A software vendor can be fined under GDPR for a breach of its customers' data
Sweden's data protection authority fined Miljödata, an HR software vendor, 1.8 million kronor (about 160,000 euros) und…
9 Oct 2026
GDPR counts an AI agent reading personal data past its permissions as a breach
When an AI agent reaches personal data that it, or the user it acts for, is not authorised to reach, GDPR counts it as…
8 Oct 2026
Keep your cookie banner. The Digital Omnibus cookie reform is still a proposal.
The EU's Digital Omnibus proposes fewer cookie banners, but it is not law. In August 2026 Parliament had not voted and…
2 Oct 2026
The EU KIDS Act would regulate general AI chatbots, not customer-support bots
The EU KIDS Act, proposed on 17 September 2026 and not yet law, would regulate AI chatbots that minors can reach and th…
30 Sep 2026
A DSA illegal content report form should accept reports without a name or email
If people in the EU can upload, publish or share content through your product, the Digital Services Act requires a way…
29 Sep 2026
In a high-risk data breach, GDPR says to tell everyone affected, not only your users
After a breach likely to put people at high risk, GDPR Article 34 requires telling every affected person, including peo…
27 Sep 2026
Email tracking pixels need consent in France, even if you are not based there
Open-tracking pixels need the recipient's consent in France, wherever the sender is based. Two uses are exempt, securin…
26 Sep 2026
Your AI agent's tool list is the recipient list your privacy policy has to name
Giving a language model tools means the model decides at run time which companies receive personal data. GDPR Article 1…
21 Sep 2026
Fine-tuning rarely makes you a model's provider under the AI Act. The threshold is a third of the base model's compute.
The AI Act has two provider roles, and a fine-tune almost never moves the second one to you. Shipping an AI feature und…
18 Sep 2026
NIS2 gives you 24 hours to report a full cloud outage longer than 30 minutes
NIS2 gives you 24 hours from becoming aware of a significant incident to file a first report with your national cyber i…
13 Sep 2026
GDPR gives you one month to answer a deletion request, even if the data is already deleted
On 21 July 2026 the CNIL fined the IT consultancy EXTIA 300,000 euros over deletion requests, mostly because 166 people…
12 Sep 2026
Uber fined 825 million euros for automatically banning drivers
On 21 August 2026 the Dutch data protection authority fined Uber 824,990,000 euros for switching off drivers' accounts…
8 Sep 2026
Is legitimate interest enough for product analytics? Check what your tool stores on the device first.
Not on its own. Two rules apply to analytics, in order. Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive, the rule behind cookie…
6 Sep 2026
How long can you keep user data? Write down the period, then make something enforce it.
Set a period for each category of data you hold, publish it, and build something that enforces it. GDPR Article 5(1)(e)…
4 Sep 2026
An auditor keeps your security honest. Nothing keeps your privacy policy honest.
A SOC 2 audit examines the security controls you scoped into it, and platforms like Vanta collect the evidence for that…
24 Aug 2026
Adding AI to your app? Add these three disclosures to your privacy policy.
Calling an LLM API adds three things to what GDPR Article 13 makes you disclose: the model vendor becomes a recipient o…
19 Aug 2026
Your Vercel app deploys on every merge. Its privacy policy is still on version one.
Vercel's compliance covers Vercel's own service, not the app you deploy on it. From day one your privacy policy must di…
19 Aug 2026
Remove "we may" or "possible" from your privacy policy. EU regulators call for plain language.
Search your own privacy policy for "we may". I did it to 336 published policies from Product Hunt launches and 231 of t…
18 Aug 2026
Starting September 11 2026, you have just 24 hours to report on-device vulnerabilities.
The Cyber Resilience Act's reporting duties start on 11 September 2026. The CRA covers software that runs on the user's…
17 Aug 2026
Product Hunt seriesThe most upvoted Product Hunt launches are no more compliant than the least
I scanned 458 products launched on Product Hunt over 30 days in 2026 and split them by upvotes. Across a range from 4 t…
11 Aug 2026
Product Hunt seriesOnly 45% of Product Hunt privacy policies name a legal basis
I scanned 458 products that launched on Product Hunt over 30 days in July and August 2026. 397 published a readable pri…
11 Aug 2026
Product Hunt series60% of Product Hunt sites load a foreign vendor their policy never mentions
I scanned 458 products launched on Product Hunt over 30 days, loading each from inside the EU and reading its legal pag…
11 Aug 2026
Product Hunt seriesOnly 17% of Product Hunt launches ask when they set tracking cookies
I scanned 458 products that launched on Product Hunt over 30 days in July and August 2026, loading each site from an EU…
11 Aug 2026
Two days from launch with no privacy policy. Twelve facts have to be true.
Before you publish a Privacy Policy, GDPR Article 13 requires twelve items. Two are close to boilerplate and one is you…
6 Aug 2026
Article 33 asks four things. The EDPB's new breach template asks 100.
The EDPB's draft template for personal data breach notification, which went out for comment until 5 August 2026, turns…
3 Aug 2026
Scraping the whole internet is the easy case. Your small, targeted scrape is not.
The EDPB's draft Guidelines 03/2026 cover web scraping for generative AI, and they reach the team that re-uses someone…
3 Aug 2026
Article 50 applies on 2 August 2026, and your model vendor cannot carry it for you
Article 50 of the EU AI Act applies from 2 August 2026. The delay you read about in June covered high-risk uses such as…
30 Jul 2026