Meta says European regulators are ruining its AI bot

Meta pauses plans for its AI assistant in Europe after receiving concerns from Ireland’s privacy regulator announced on Friday.

In a blog post, Meta said that Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) had asked the company to delay training its huge language models on content publicly posted on its Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Meta said it was “disappointed” with the request, “particularly since we have taken into account the views of regulatory and European authorities [Data Protection Authorities] have been informed since March.” According to Irish IndependentMeta recently began notifying users in Europe that it would be collecting their data and offering an opt-out option in an attempt to comply with European privacy laws.

Meta said it “will continue to work with DPC.” However, the blog post says that Google and OpenAI “have already used data from Europeans to train AI” and states that if regulators do not allow the company to employ user information to train its models, Meta may only deliver an inferior product . “Put simply, without local information we would only be able to offer people a second-rate experience. This means that we cannot launch Meta AI in Europe at this time.”

On the other hand, European regulators welcomed the break.

“We are pleased that Meta has taken on board the concerns we have shared with users of its services in the UK and responded to our request to pause and review plans to use Facebook and Instagram user data to train generative artificial intelligence,” Stephen Almond, executive director of technology at Meta. regulatory risk at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, he said in a statement.

The DPC request followed a campaign by advocacy group NOYB – None of Your Business, which filed 11 complaints against Meta in several European countries, Reuters reports. NOYB founder Max Schrems said Irish Independent that the complaint was based on the legal basis for Meta’s collection of personal data. “Meta basically says it can use any data from any source for any purpose and make it available to anyone in the world, as long as it’s done using artificial intelligence technology,” Schrems said. “This is clearly the opposite of GDPR compliance.”