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Meta won’t offer its next multimodal Llama AI model, or any future models, to customers in the EU, according to Axios.
The tech giant cites the “unpredictable nature” of the EU’s regulatory environment as key in its decision. However, it’s not the EU’s new AI Act that is at fault here but rather GDPR, which regulates data protection in Europe.?
Meta seems unsure how it can train models using EU customer data while remaining compliant with GDPR. The company already announced that plans to release its AI assistant in Europe are on hold, as is the rollout of its generative AI tools in Brazil.
It seems like Meta isn’t alone, either. Opting out of offering products to EU customers seems to be a growing trend amongst US tech giants. Last month, Apple revealed it won’t offer Apple Intelligence features in Europe in 2024 due to regulatory concerns.
This isn’t great news for companies outside the EU looking to incorporate the new multimodal models, which can reason across audio, text, video, and images. They’re now prevented from marketing products based on these Meta models to consumers in the European Union.?
UK Consumers Will Still Receive Future Multimodal AI Models
Although the UK’s data protection laws are similar to GDPR, Meta says the new model will be available to UK users due to less regulatory uncertainty in the United Kingdom. It’s also releasing a larger, text-only Llama 3 model which will be available to EU consumers.
In May, Meta said it would use publicly available Instagram and Facebook posts to train its future AI models, apparently briefing EU regulators well in advance of this announcement. It sent over two billion notifications to EU users allowing them to opt out of their data being used for model training.
Despite this, Meta says it received minimal feedback from regulators, who ordered the tech giant to pause training using EU data in June following data privacy concerns. Meta pointed out how important it is to train models on European data, to ensure its products are representative of the region’s terminology and culture.
Tech companies argue that tighter EU privacy regulations are harmful not only to consumers but also to the competitiveness of European companies. It feels like this may not be the last we hear of US tech giants withholding products from EU users at a time when tensions are high between the two.
