Meta refuses to sign EU's AI act, calling it “the wrong path”
Meta said on Friday that it won’t sign the European Union’s artificial intelligence (AI) code of practice, which Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan described as "over-reach."
Image by Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Meta said on Friday that it won’t sign the European Union’s artificial intelligence (AI) code of practice, which Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan described as "the wrong path" and "over-reach."
A new voluntary set of rules, published last week, offers a code of practice for general-purpose AI. According to EU officials cited by The Wall Street Journal, the code includes guidance on safety and security, transparency, and copyright to guide companies through the bloc’s wide-ranging legislation on AI.
The new rules are voluntary, meaning that Meta is not obliged to sign them, and yet Kaplan warned that they add legal uncertainties and implement certain measures that go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.
“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI. We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and Meta won’t be signing it. This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act,” he said in a post on LinkedIn.
The code has faced aggressive lobbying from industry leaders. CEOs from over 40 European companies, including ASML, Philips, and Siemens, requested a “two-year clock-stop” on the AI Act implementation ahead of August, when its key obligations are due to enter into force.
Not only does the enforcement mean additional costs for compliance, but compliance itself remains tricky.
They explained that the delay will allow “both for reasonable implementation by companies, and for further simplification of the new rules.”
“We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them,” Kaplan added.
Tech giants are also worried that the code will negatively impact innovation, especially in Europe, where companies have smaller compliance teams than those in the US.