Meta has indefinitely halted the rollout of its AI features in the EU due to “unpredictable” European data privacy regulations. This decision follows Meta’s previous suspension of AI data collection in Europe, prompted by a request from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) last month.
In a statement, Meta announced, “We will release a multimodal Llama model over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment.” Consequently, Meta’s AI features will not be available to European users or companies across its services.
This mirrors Apple’s stance, as their recently-launched ‘Apple Intelligence’ features also won’t be available in the EU this year due to regulatory uncertainties.
The main issue for these tech giants is the ambiguity surrounding the legality of using personal data from millions of EU citizens to train their AI models. For Meta, this includes data from users’ photos, comments, and other content on public Facebook and Instagram posts, which is essential for creating a ‘large language model’ (LLM) used in AI responses to user queries and prompts.
Unlike Meta and Apple, Google and OpenAI are reportedly continuing to use EU personal data for training their AI models. This divergence is likely to heighten transatlantic tensions over the EU’s regulatory approach, with industry executives frequently arguing that Europe’s regulations are too stringent, hindering the growth and competitiveness of EU tech companies.
AI data collection remains contentious. Privacy campaigner Max Schrems, a long-time critic of Meta, recently filed a complaint against Meta’s AI data collection plans. Schrems has called on multiple European regulators to challenge the legal basis for Meta’s collection of personal data.
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