Meta, Spotify Execs Slam EU AI Regulations

Meta and Spotify criticize EU AI regulations, arguing they hinder innovation and delay access to advanced AI models, affecting European users and developers.

Once more, Meta and Spotify are collaborating on open source, or more accurately, open-weight, artificial intelligence (AI), which they say is hindered by restrictions. Both CEOs of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and Spotify, Daniel Ek, complained on Friday in joint posts posted to their respective websites about how EU privacy laws about artificial intelligence impede innovation. For example, Meta notes that regulators still need to create legislation to address how this should be handled, so it has yet to be allowed to train its AI models on public data from Facebook and Instagram.

In the short term, the most potent AI models won’t reflect Europe’s collective knowledge, culture, and languages—and Europeans won’t get to use the newest AI products—if data regularly used in other countries is delayed, according to Meta’s blog post. It also emphasizes that AI “built for someone else” will be Europeans’ only option rather than the newest open-source technology.

The statement also verified rumors that Meta would not provide EU customers with its upcoming multimodel AI model because of unclear regulatory guidance. As noted by Meta, it won’t be able to deploy future AI models like Llama Multimodel, which can comprehend visuals.

On the other hand, Spotify credits its early adoption of AI technology with helping create a customized experience for every user, which is why the streaming service was initially so successful.

“We see enormous potential to use open-source AI to benefit the industry as we look to the future of streaming.” This is particularly significant regarding how AI may aid in discovering more artists. According to the post, “a more straightforward regulatory framework would not only hasten the development of open-source AI but also offer vital assistance to European developers and the larger creator ecosystem that both supports and benefits from these breakthroughs.”

If one read between the lines, one could conclude that Spotify is affected by the EU’s unclear AI legislation and would like to leverage Meta’s AI technology to enhance its offerings.

Of course, when regulation benefits them, neither of these businesses is opposed to it.

For example, the two are united against Apple because of its monopoly on the App Store, which led EU authorities to refer to the producer of the iPhone as a “gatekeeper” in the Big Tech industry before compelling it to allow other app stores, payment methods, and other features. Meta and Spotify criticized Apple’s response, not the rule per se. In this instance, Zuckerberg and Ek agreed to criticize Apple’s new business regulations for EU developers under the area’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), stating that they were so burdensome that they doubted any developer would choose to participate. Additionally, Spotify referred to Apple’s compliance plan as a “complete and total farce” and “extortion.”

Before working together on music-related projects like a Facebook mini player that streamed Spotify straight from the app, Meta and Spotify had a long history of collaboration.