Meta said it has decided not to offer its upcoming multimodal AI model and future versions to customers in the European Union due to a lack of clarity from European regulators. AxiosThe model in question is designed to process not only text but also images and audio, and powers the AI capabilities of the Meta platform and the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses.
“We plan to release the multimodal Llama model in the coming months, but it will not be released in the EU due to the unpredictable regulatory environment there,” Mehta said in a statement. Axios.
Meta’s move follows a similar decision by Apple, which recently announced it would not release its Apple Intelligence feature in Europe due to regulatory concerns. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vesteger denounced Apple’s decision as “an astonishing, public declaration that they are 100% aware that this is another way to kill competition where they already have an advantage.” Engadget has reached out to Vesteger for comment on Meta’s decision.
Withholding Meta’s multimodal AI models from the EU could have far-reaching implications: it would mean that companies that build products or services using the models would no longer be able to offer them in Europe.
Mehta said Axios The company said it remains committed to releasing its upcoming text-only model, Llama 3, in the EU. The company’s main concerns stem from the challenge of training its AI models with data from European customers while complying with the EU’s existing data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Meta announced in May that it planned to use public posts from Facebook and Instagram users to train future AI models, but faced backlash from EU data privacy regulators, forcing it to halt its EU rollout. At the time, Meta defended its actions, saying being able to train models with European users’ data was necessary to reflect local culture and terminology.
“Without training our models on public content, such as public posts and comments that Europeans share on our and other services, our models and the AI features they power will not accurately understand important regional language, culture, and trending topics on social media,” the company said in a blog post. “Europeans would be disadvantaged by AI models that do not take into account Europe’s rich cultural, social, and historical contributions.”
Meta has been cautious about releasing its multimodal model in the EU, but plans to do so in the UK, which has similar data protection laws to the EU. The company argued that European regulators have been slower to interpret existing laws than their counterparts in other regions.
