Meta and Spotify have both recently lashed out at the EU’s AI regulations, claiming that a lack of clarity and consistency will ultimately cost the bloc in terms of innovation and opportunity.
This has become a common refrain in criticism of AI regulations by tech outfits, but the two companies have taken the unusual step of issuing a joint statement on the matter. They also specifically note that the EU is home to a larger number of open source developers than the United States has, and that the bloc is risking being stuck with AI tools made for “someone else” if companies opt to keep delaying deployment of models there.
Meta and Spotify join forces to criticize EU AI regulations
The CEOs of the two companies cited the EU’s “inconsistent” and “fragmented” AI regulations as the central reason for the delays in rollout of products to European customers and developers. Meta paused the release of new AI models in the EU in June, though this was done at least partially due to a request by the Irish DPC. Spotify’s release of its “AI DJ” feature also lagged in Europe, though was ultimately released in August 2023 several months after the US and other countries got it.
The companies argue that the EU should have simpler and more harmonized regulations given that it has a single market. The bloc’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) began going into force on August 1, but some of its terms are staggered through the coming years and go active as late as August 2027.
Meta’s primary complaint with the EU thus far has been the prospect of restrictions on its ability to incorporate the personal data of regional Facebook and Instagram users into its training models. The company has not yet been formally charged with GDPR violations in this area, but has been warned that its training may well fall afoul of the law and that it should pause activities until regulators possess greater clarity on how AI intersects with these existing data privacy laws. The company’s longtime nemesis in the EU, privacy advocacy group noyb, filed 11 complaints about its AI-related data use in June.
Meta has cautioned that the upcoming Llama multimodal model, which is the first with the ability to understand what it is “seeing” in images, is very likely to be available in other countries long before it hits Europe. Spotify indicated that clearer AI regulations would aid it in providing tools to developers in the region, which would in turn provide users with a more personalized and insightful experience in activities like finding new music and forming playlists. The two companies opting to synchronize their press releases points to Spotify planning to make use of Meta’s AI technology in some way with its own products. The two companies have worked together before, one example being a Spotify mini-player available to Facebook users.
Do AI regulations really threaten to leave EU behind?
The tech companies are correct in that Europe is lagging behind other parts of the world in AI development, though it is not always due to AI regulations. The US is the natural center of development as the home of most of the well-funded tech giants conducting the most advanced research, with nearly 50% of all global spending on these projects. That compares unfavorably to just 20% of that spending taking place in Western Europe, but the EU has been projected to be the fastest-growing region over the next five years.
But the region is also racing China, which has been throwing considerable resources behind its own tech giants (such as Tencent and Baidu) and has also launched its own stringent set of AI regulations. The EU also lost the UK just ahead of it making a concerted push to be an AI development leader, now playing host to Google DeepMind among many other projects and going to great lengths to court venture capital funding. Other significant players at this point include Japan, Singapore and India.
Some EU nations, such as Germany and France, are already among research leaders even with the early AI regulations in place. The EU is considered a potential leader in the coming years due not just to its preponderance of open source developers, but its industrial base and existing progress toward business digitalization. But it is entirely possible that the region will see the most profit and promise in tuning AI to its own internal business needs and industries, leaving the major breakthroughs and most cutting-edge tech to the US firms. The region has also already become something of a regulatory leader, with its rules used as inspiration for similar legislation in Brazil and other nations (much as the GDPR has become something of a template for data privacy rights around the world).
