Scoop: Meta won't offer future multimodal AI models in EU | Hacker News Reader

Scoop: Meta won't offer future multimodal AI models in EU

axios.com

12 pointsbenbristow16 comments

If that's the tradeoff for them not training on our photos and videos, then I am happy with that. However I suspect they might do it anyway, and it will just be harder for us to find out.

Hopefully just EU and not the European countries outside of EU.

Hopefully all of them.

What? You think non EU countries should be affected by EU decisions?

If they're a part of EU, EEA, or EFTA, then yes.

Perfect example of corporate doublespeak.

"The EU regulatory environment is unpredictable" translates to "our products don't comply with regulation, and we'd rather not get fined". It's good that the fines are high enough and enforced now that companies are at least afraid of them.

Meta is still having issues complying with the GDPR, which has been in place for 6 years now. There's nothing "unpredictable" about it.

> A Meta representative told Axios that training on European data is key to ensuring its products properly reflect the terminology and culture of the region.

Sure. You just can't hoover up data without people's consent, as you normally do. What a concept.

> 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.

seems like a dig at those French AI national champions

"unpredictable nature of European regulatory environment" reads as "8 years after GDPR, we still design our stuff mass surveillance style, and that may be problematic. Glad to live in an unpredictable country if it protects me from crap products that spy on me.

As the article already points out, there's a new, more relevant bogeyman in town: AI Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence_Act).

That reads like a gift to US and Chinese tech companies. Also explains why Apple isn’t launching in EU:

“Like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, the Act can apply extraterritorially to providers from outside the EU if they have users within the EU.”

> Also explains why Apple isn’t launching in EU

I don't buy it. From the AI act:

> Generative AI, like ChatGPT, will not be classified as high-risk, but will have to comply with transparency requirements and EU copyright law:

    > Disclosing that the content was generated by AI
    Designing the model to prevent it from generating illegal content
    Publishing summaries of copyrighted data used for training

> High-impact general-purpose AI models that might pose systemic risk, such as the more advanced AI model GPT-4, would have to undergo thorough evaluations and any serious incidents would have to be reported to the European Commission.

> Content that is either generated or modified with the help of AI - images, audio or video files (for example deepfakes) - need to be clearly labelled as AI generated so that users are aware when they come across such content.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20230601STO...

Seems reasonable to me. My theory is that they are still salty about the DMA, so that's the payback.

As the article points out:

> 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.

Well played, I've glossed over the significance of that sentence!

Oh dear, how will they live without the ability to make low budget smoothed over pictures of an anthropomorphic pickle dunking a basketball from a voice prompt. Truly, those dreadful europeans will suffer. /s

It’s telling that a company as privacy conscious (relatively speaking) and as deep pocketed as Apple can’t figure out how to comply with EU regulations: “ Apple similarly said last month that it won't release its Apple Intelligence features in Europe because of regulatory concerns.”

Big difference between can't and won't. Apple is clearly in the "we're going to be as difficult as possible because we don't like it" category. Meta is not too far behind (already annoyed by all the things that don't let them just spy on everyone in order to super-boost their ads).

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