Meta Platforms Inc. has announced its decision not to sign the European Union’s Code of Practice for the AI Act, a voluntary framework designed to assist companies in aligning with the bloc’s forthcoming artificial intelligence regulations. This move comes just weeks before the EU’s rules for providers of general-purpose AI models are set to take effect.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer, expressed concerns over the Code’s implications. In a LinkedIn post, he stated, 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.
The EU’s Code of Practice, published earlier this month, is a voluntary framework aimed at helping companies implement processes and systems to comply with the bloc’s AI legislation. It requires companies to provide and regularly update documentation about their AI tools and services, prohibits developers from training AI on pirated content, and mandates compliance with content owners’ requests to exclude their works from data sets.
Kaplan criticized the EU’s approach, labeling it as overreach and warning that it could throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them.
The AI Act is a risk-based regulation that bans certain unacceptable risk use cases outright, such as cognitive behavioral manipulation or social scoring. It also defines a set of high-risk uses, including biometrics and facial recognition, and in domains like education and employment. The act requires developers to register AI systems and meet risk and quality management obligations.
Tech companies worldwide, including industry leaders like Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Mistral AI, have been advocating against the rules, urging the European Commission to delay its rollout. However, the Commission has remained steadfast, indicating it will not alter its timeline.
On the same day as Meta’s announcement, the EU published guidelines for providers of AI models ahead of rules set to go into effect on August 2. These rules will impact providers of general-purpose AI models with systemic risk, such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. Companies with such models on the market before August 2 will be required to comply with the legislation by that date.
This development underscores the ongoing tension between major tech companies and European regulators as they seek to balance innovation with regulatory oversight in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence.
