After rapidly pushing into the AI space, Meta has announced a pause on some of its initiatives amid regulatory scrutiny.
On Wednesday, Meta announced it would halt the use of its generative AI tools in Brazil due to opposition from the country’s government over privacy concerns related to personal data and AI. This decision follows a ban by Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority earlier this month, which prohibits Meta from training its AI models on Brazilians’ personal data. According to Reuters, Meta had updated its privacy policy in May to allow the training of AI on public data from Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram in Brazil. The ANPD argued that Meta’s policy poses “the imminent risk of serious and irreparable or difficult-to-repair damage to the fundamental rights of the affected data subjects,” as reported by the Associated Press.
In parallel, Meta has decided against releasing its upcoming and future multimodal AI models in the European Union due to the “unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment,” the company stated in a statement shared with Axios. This decision comes after Apple announced in June that it would likely not introduce its new Apple Intelligence and other AI features in the EU due to the Digital Markets Act.
Despite Meta’s multimodal models being under an open license, companies in Europe will not be able to use them because of this decision, Axios reported. Additionally, companies outside the EU might be blocked from offering products and services on the continent that utilize Meta’s models. However, Meta plans to release a larger, text-only version of its Llama 3 model in the EU, according to the company’s statement to Axios.
In June, Meta delayed training its large language models on public data from Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union after facing resistance from the Irish Data Protection Commission. Meta expressed its concerns, stating,
This is a step backwards for European innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Europe.”
