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Meta has hit back at EU regulators, saying they are “heading down the wrong path on AI.”
The company will not sign the the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general‑purpose AI (GPAI) models, says Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer.
Published earlier this week, the document is a voluntary list of guidelines governing everything from copyright law to transparency, as well as safety and security for the most advanced AI models. Signing the code would mean agreeing to provide certain rights protections for creators whose content is used to train AIs, and it would oblige each firm to publish documentation outlining the features of any tools they roll out.
It’s intended to act as a set of guidelines to help firms comply with the EU’s highly complex AI Act, but Kaplan argues that the Code "introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act."
The EU’s “overreach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models” in the region and “stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them," he adds.
Earlier this month, a group of some of the largest European companies wrote to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, asking her to delay the implementation of the AI Act by two years. Signees included Dutch aerospace giant Airbus and Siemens Energy AG.
Outside of official statements, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pretty open about his desire to push back against the firm hand of EU regulators. In an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience earlier this year, Zuckerberg claimed the EU is using fines “almost like a tariff” but said he's “optimistic” about the Trump administration defending American firms operating in the EU. Meta has already paid EU regulators hundreds of millions on account of antitrust violations.
Failing to comply with the AI Act could have serious financial consequences, including fines of up to €35 million or 7% of global annual turnover for the most serious offences, whichever is greater.