Is the EU killing efforts around AI due to different regulations?
According to an Axios article, Meta won't offer future multimodal AI models in the EU. This is Meta's response to EU regulators and "highlights "a growing willingness among U.S. tech giants to withhold products from European customers.
According to the article, Meta will be releasing a multimodal Llama model over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment. Apple has made the same decision concerning some of its Apple Intelligence features in Europe.
A multimodal model can reason across video, audio, images, and text. Meta will incorporate the models in smartphones and its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. However, Meta won't let European companies use the multimodal models even if they are released under an open license.
It would not only impact EU organizations but also organizations outside the EU that want to embed the Llama model within their solutions. According to the Axios article, Meta's issue is not 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. What is interesting is that the United Kingdom has a law that is nearly identical to GDPR. Still, according to Meta, they do not see a similar kind of regulatory uncertainty in the UK. Interestingly, both Google and OpenAI are already training in European data.
We at TELLUS and our strategic partner A-CX ran a webinar about AI in Europe a few months ago. The webinar addressed some of the complications of the upcoming AI Act and what it could mean to businesses. However, new uncertainties around AI have made the situation even worse.
There is clearly tension between the EU and the U.S. concerning AI and privacy and how large language models (LLMs) are trained. It is interesting to see how the recent acquisition of Silo.ai by AMD will deal with EU-related regulations and how AMD will deal with regulations that Meta is dealing with today.
EU regulators must ask themselves whether they are willing to leave entrepreneurs and businesses behind the AI curve. I also question whether the decision-makers in these regulatory bodies fully understand the ramifications their regulations might have on EU competitiveness. I doubt they have. Decisions made purely by politicians hardly even lead to results based on pure facts as the decision is based on the party on whom the decision maker wants to impress in the political spectrum.
As a software executive for more than 30 years, the software field is getting more complex, not because of the technology but due to other aspects. The industry is facing more regulation; software companies are increasingly facing cyber attacks by cyber criminals, and these software companies should increase their focus on cyber security as any exploits could lead to catastrophic results, especially if the information contained includes personal information (PPI) data. Multiple companies have recently been exploited, one of them being AT&T.
As a business owner of TELLUS International boutique management consulting firm, I see tremendous opportunities in helping software and end-user organizations explore the land of opportunity concerning AI and the transformation of business models in the AI era. The business workshops from TELLUS International to set the AI strategy around the business model and the technical design and engineering services from A-CX formulate a better together story, which is the foundation for the partnering that we have now had for more than a year.
I would love to hear about your AI plans and, if you are on a journey, whether you have succeeded with them.
Yours,
Dr. Petri I. Salonen
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