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Meta has decided to not offer its upcoming multimodal AI model and future versions to customers in the European Union citing a lack of clarity from European regulators, according to a report<\/a> by Axios<\/em>. The models in question are designed to process not only text but also images and audio, and power AI capabilities in Meta platforms as well as the company\u2019s Ray-Ban smart glasses<\/a>.<\/p>\n “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 said in a statement to Axios<\/em>.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s move follows a similar decision<\/a> by Apple, which recently announced it would not release its Apple Intelligence features in Europe due to regulatory concerns. Margrethe Vesteger, the EU\u2019s competition commissioner, had slammed<\/a> Apple\u2019s move, saying that the company\u2019s decision was a \u201cstunning, open declaration that they know 100 percent that this is another way of disabling competition where they have a stronghold already.\u201d Engadget has reached out to Vesteger for comment on Meta\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n Withholding Meta\u2019s multimodal AI models from the EU could have far-reaching implications \u2014 it means that any companies that use them to build their products and services would be unable to offer them in Europe.<\/p>\n Meta told Axios<\/em> that it still plans to release Llama 3<\/a>, the company\u2019s upcoming text-only model in the EU. The company\u2019s primary concern stems from the challenges of training AI models using data from European customers while complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s existing data protection law. In May, Meta announced<\/a> that it planned to use publicly available posts from Facebook and Instagram users to train future AI models but was forced to stop doing so in the EU after receiving pushback from data privacy regulators in the region. At the time, Meta defended its actions, saying that being able to train its models on the data of European users was necessary to reflect local culture and terminology.<\/p>\n “If we don\u2019t train our models on the public content that Europeans share on our services and others, such as public posts or comments, then models and the AI features they power won\u2019t accurately understand important regional languages, cultures or trending topics on social media,” the company said in a blog post<\/a>. “We believe that Europeans will be ill-served by AI models that are not informed by Europe\u2019s rich cultural, social and historical contributions.”<\/p>\n Despite its reservations about releasing its multimodal models in the EU, Meta still plans to launch them in the UK, which has similar data protection laws to the EU. The company argued that European regulators are taking longer to interpret existing laws compared to their counterparts in other regions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n