Meta and Spotify Leaders Condemn EU’s AI Regulation Policies
Meta and Spotify are against the strict privacy rules in the EU, saying that they slow down AI innovation and make it difficult for Europeans to use the newest AI technologies. They are also against Apple’s strict rules for the App Store.
This time, Meta and Spotify are working together to fight open source, or more specifically, open-weight AI, which they say is being slowed down by rules. In statements posted on Friday to both companies’ websites, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, both say that EU privacy rules about AI are slowing down innovation.
Meta, for example, says it hasn’t been able to train its AI models on public data from Facebook and Instagram because lawmakers haven’t done enough work on the laws that should handle this yet.
In Meta’s blog post, they warn that if we wait to use data that is commonly used in other areas, the most powerful AI models won’t be able to reflect the knowledge, culture, and languages of Europe, and Europeans won’t be able to use the newest AI products.
It also says that Europeans won’t be able to use the newest open-source technology. Instead, they will have to use AI that was “built for someone else.”
The post also confirmed earlier rumors that Meta would not sell its next multimodel AI model to customers in the EU because regulators were not clear.
This means that, as Meta points out, it won’t be able to release new AI models like the Llama multimodel, which can understand images.
Spotify, on the other hand, says that investing early in AI technology is what made its streaming service so popular in the first place. This is because it makes each user’s experience more personal.
“When we think about the future of streaming, we see a huge chance to help the industry with open-source AI.” This is very important when we talk about how AI can help more artists get discovered. ”
A simpler regulatory structure would not only speed up the growth of open-source AI, but it would also help European developers and the larger creator ecosystem that supports and grows from these innovations,” the post says.
It’s not too much of a stretch to think that Spotify would like to use Meta’s AI technology to make its products better, but that the EU’s lack of clear AI regulations makes that impossible. Neither of these businesses violates the rules when they help them.
Meta and Spotify Criticize Apple’s Compliance
One thing that both of them hate is Apple’s monopoly on the App Store. EU regulators called the iPhone maker a “Big Tech gatekeeper” and forced it to let other app stores, app distribution methods, and payment systems work, among other things.
It wasn’t that Meta and Spotify didn’t agree with the rule; it was how Apple handled it. In this case, Zuckerberg agreed with Ek that Apple’s new business rules for EU developers under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) were difficult to follow and he didn’t think any developers would choose to follow them.
Spotify also said that Apple’s plan to follow the rules was “extortion” and a “complete and total farce.” In the past few years, Meta and Spotify have worked together on music projects, such as a Facebook miniplayer that streamed Spotify directly from the app.
