Meta to refrain from sharing multimodal AI models with EU due to regulatory uncertainty
Meta has announced that it will not be making its upcoming multimodal AI model and future versions available to customers in the European Union due to a lack of clear guidance from European regulators. The models are intended to handle text, images, and audio, and are meant to enhance AI features on Meta platforms and Ray-Ban smart glasses.
“We will launch the multimodal Llama model in the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment,” Meta said in a statement to Axios.
Meta’s move follows a similar decision by Apple, which recently announced it would not release Apple Intelligence features in Europe due to regulatory concerns. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Visteger slammed Apple’s decision, saying the company’s decision was “an astonishing, open declaration that they know 100 percent that this is another way to prevent competition where they already have a strong base.” Leaving Meta’s multimodal AI models out of the EU could have far-reaching consequences – meaning that any companies that use them to build their products and services would not be able to offer them in Europe.
EU spokesman Thomas Regnier told ReturnByte that the regulator does not comment on individual decisions by companies. “It is the responsibility of companies to ensure that their services comply with our legislation,” Regnier said in a statement, adding that all companies are welcome to offer services in Europe as long as they comply with the bloc’s laws, including future artificial intelligence. Act.
Meta told Axios that it still plans to release Llama 3, the company’s upcoming text-only model, in the EU. The company’s primary concern stems from the challenges of training AI models using data from European customers while complying with the EU’s current data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In May, Meta announced plans to use publicly available messages from Facebook and Instagram users to train future AI models, but was forced to stop doing so in the EU after objections from the region’s data protection authorities. At the time, Meta defended its actions, saying that the ability to train its models on data from European users was necessary to reflect local culture and terminology.
“If we don’t train our models on public content that Europeans share on our services and other services, such as public posts or comments, the models and the AI capabilities they use will not accurately understand important regional languages, cultures or trending topics on social media,” the company said in a blog post. “We believe that Europeans are ill-served by AI models that are unaware of Europe’s rich cultural, social and historical contributions.”
Despite Meta’s reservations about launching its multimodal models in the EU, it still plans to launch them in the UK, which has similar data protection laws to the EU. The company argued that European regulators are taking longer to interpret existing laws compared to similar ones in other regions.
