Meta presses pause on launch of latest AI in Britain and EU

Meta Platforms’ latest artificial intelligence technology will not be launched initially in Britain or the European Union because of regulatory uncertainty.
Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, unveiled a series of updates to Meta’s AI products on Wednesday, including smart glasses that can remind you where you parked your car and a digital assistant that can respond to questions in the voice of Dame Judi Dench.
However, the AI technology will not be available immediately in Europe. It will be rolled out in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Meta has blamed the stalled rollout of Meta AI in Europe on uncertainty around what data can be used to train AI models.
In an open letter to European policymakers this month, 59 technology companies, including Meta, warned that fragmented AI regulation had put Europe at risk of “falling further behind in the AI era”. They said the “reality is that Europe has become less competitive and less innovative compared to other regions”.
Signatories of the letter also included Ericsson, the Swedish telecoms company, and Spotify, the music streaming group.
Meta AI is expected to be launched in Britain before the rest of Europe as Meta proceeds with controversial plans to begin training its AI models using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram in the UK. Meta has said that the process will help its models to reflect the history and culture of the UK.
The Information Commissioner’s Office questioned Meta about the plans and Meta subsequently simplified the way in which users can object to the processing of their data via their account settings. In the EU, regulators have said that the plans do not meet the region’s stringent privacy and transparency rules.
Zuckerberg told developers at Meta’s annual Connect conference in Menlo Park, California, that Meta AI, the company’s rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, was likely already the most-used digital assistant in the world. He said MetaAI had more than 400 million monthly users, despite being yet to arrive in Europe.
Meta is investing billions of dollars in AI technology in the hope that it will lead to increased revenue from the company’s family of apps. Zuckerberg used the conference to unveil the first working prototype of augmented-reality glasses, called Orion.
Meta’s shares were up $9.08, or 1.6 per cent, at $572.41 in mid-afternoon trading in New York.