Meta announced on Thursday a delay in releasing its most advanced generative AI models in Europe due to uncertainties surrounding EU regulations.
The European Union’s recent wave of tech regulations presents significant challenges for predominantly US-based tech companies as they expand services and introduce new products.
In the competitive generative AI landscape, Meta developed Llama, AI models with capabilities similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The next generation of these models will be multimodal, capable of processing prompts and generating content in text, video, or audio formats. However, Meta stated that these innovations will not be available in Europe.
“Due to the unpredictable European regulatory environment, we will release a multimodal Llama model in the coming months, but not in the EU,” Meta explained.
Meta attributed the delay to complexities in complying with GDPR, the EU’s data privacy law, which governs how companies handle European user data.
Furthermore, EU authorities restrict Meta from utilizing public data for model training, a practice Meta claims its competitors, Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI, have engaged in.
This decision will particularly impact upcoming updates to Meta’s Ray Ban smart glasses, which are planned to include AI-powered features like sign translation and foreign language assistance.
Citing the need for legal clarity with EU authorities, Meta and other tech companies have increasingly postponed European launches of their latest products.
Last year, Meta delayed the EU release of its Twitter competitor, Threads, by several months. Similarly, Google has withheld its AI tools from the EU market for months.
While the European Commission did not provide an immediate response, it has consistently affirmed its commitment to enforcing its new tech regulations.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined plans to “ramp up and intensify our enforcement” of tech regulation in a policy paper outlining her agenda for the next five years. She emphasized that “Tech giants must take responsibility for their immense systemic power within our society and economy.”
arp/dw
Source Link
