Meta will withhold its next multimodal LLaMA AI model — and future ones — from customers in the European Union due to regulatory uncertainties. This decision sets the stage for a confrontation between Meta and EU regulators and highlights a trend of U.S. tech giants withholding products from European markets.
💬 “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 stated. This move impacts European companies and prevents non-EU companies from offering products in Europe that utilize these models.
🔍 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 its intention to use publicly available posts from Facebook and Instagram to train future models, offering EU users a means to opt out. Despite briefing EU regulators months in advance and receiving minimal feedback, Meta was ordered to pause the training in June, leading to numerous questions from data privacy regulators.
🇬🇧 Interestingly, Meta does not face the same level of regulatory uncertainty in the U.K., which has nearly identical GDPR laws, and plans to launch its new model there.
🌍 The broader picture reveals escalating tensions between U.S.-based tech companies and European regulators, with tech firms arguing that stringent regulations harm both consumers and the competitiveness of European companies.
🔑 A Meta representative highlighted the importance of training on European data to ensure products accurately reflect regional terminology and culture, noting that competitors like Google and OpenAI are already doing so.
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