Meta will withhold its next multimodal AI model — and future ones — from customers in the European Union because of what it says is a lack of clarity from regulators there, Axios has learned. The move sets up a showdown between Meta and EU regulators and highlights a growing willingness among U.S. tech giants to withhold products from European customers. “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,” Meta said in a statement to Axios. Apple similarly said last month that it won’t release its Apple Intelligence features in Europe because of regulatory concerns. The Irish Data Protection Commission, Meta’s lead privacy regulator in Europe, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta plans to incorporate the new multimodal models, which are able to reason across video, audio, images and text, in a wide range of products, including smartphones and its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. Meta says its decision also means that European companies will not be able to use the multimodal models even though they are being released under an open license. It could also prevent companies outside of the EU from offering products and services in Europe that make use of the new multimodal models. The company is also planning to release a larger, text-only version of its Llama 3 model soon. That will be made available for customers and companies in the EU, Meta said. Meta’s issue isn’t with the still-being-finalized AI Act, but rather with how it can train models using data from European customers while complying with GDPR — the EU’s existing data protection law. Meta announced in May that it planned to use publicly available posts from Facebook and Instagram users to train future models. Meta said it sent more than 2 billion notifications to users in the EU, offering a means for opting out, with training set to begin in June.
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