Meta won't offer future multimodal AI models in EU

Meta’s issue isn’t with 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.

• Meta announced in May that it planned to use publicly available posts from Facebook and Instagram users to train future models. Meta said it sent more than 2 billion notifications to users in the EU, offering a means for opting out, with training set to begin in June.
• Meta says it briefed EU regulators months in advance of that public announcement and received only minimal feedback, which it says it addressed.
• In June — after announcing its plans publicly — Meta was ordered to pause the training on EU data. A couple weeks later it received dozens of questions from data privacy regulators from across the region.