Meta has announced that it is halting its plans to launch an AI assistant in Europe after objections from Ireland’s privacy regulator. Meta said it is “disappointed” by the request, “especially as we have incorporated feedback from regulators and have notified European (data protection authorities) since March.” The company expressed its disappointment at the Irish Data Protection Commission’s (DPC) request to delay training its major language models on publicly posted content from Facebook and Instagram profiles.

Meta said it “will continue to work with the DPC.” But the blog post says that Google and OpenAI have “already used data from Europeans to train AI” and claims that Meta can only deliver an inferior product if regulators don’t allow it to use users’ information to build its models. train. “Simply put, without providing local information, we would only be giving people a second-class experience. This means that we cannot currently launch Meta AI in Europe.”

While European regulators have welcomed the pause. “We’re pleased that Meta has considered the concerns we shared from users of their service in the UK, and responded to our request to pause and halt plans to use Facebook and Instagram user data to train generative AI reviewed,” Stephen Almond, Director of Regulatory Risk at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office, said in a statement.

The DPC’s intervention followed a campaign by the interest group NOYB (None of Your Business), which filed eleven complaints against Meta in various European countries. NOYB founder Max Schrems emphasized that the core problem was Meta’s legal basis for collecting personal data.

Meta’s situation underlines the ongoing tension between tech companies and European regulators over data privacy and AI development. While Meta addresses these regulatory challenges, the future of its AI assistant in Europe remains uncertain. “Meta is essentially saying that it can take any data from any source for any purpose and make it available to anyone in the world, as long as it is done through AI technology,” Schrems said. “This is clearly the opposite of GDPR compliance.”