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Meta and Spotify CEOs criticize EU privacy rules restricting AI data training, arguing that these regulations stifle innovation in AI technology.
Open-source AI models like Meta’s Llama LLM are often trained on information found on the internet. However, not all users are comfortable with their data being used to train AI models. That’s why the European Union has privacy regulations governing AI that restrict companies from using user data for this purpose.
The other side of the story is that an AI model needs to be trained on internet data to produce accurate results. This could ultimately hinder innovation in the AI sector.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek argue that these regulations, particularly those governing the use of data for AI training, are hindering AI innovation. For Meta specifically, the rules prevent the company from training its AI model on the public data of European Facebook and Instagram users.
The Meta blog states that since the regulations do not permit the training of AI models on European user data, European users will ultimately be using an AI product designed for someone else. In the worst-case scenario, they may not have access to the latest AI innovations at all. The blog also notes that, due to regulatory ambiguity, users in the European Union will not be able to access Meta’s upcoming multimodal AI.
Why is Spotify Criticizing EU Privacy Regulations Around AI?
Understandably, Meta has AI models that it wants to train on European users. But why is Spotify supporting Meta in this effort, considering they don’t have their own AI model?
It appears that Spotify might be looking to leverage the data collected by Meta’s AI models to enhance its product. Unsurprisingly, these companies are collaborating, as they’ve done so before. Previously, Meta introduced a Facebook feature that allowed users to stream Spotify directly from the app.
The post highlights Spotify’s perspective on using open-source AI. Spotify believes it can use open-source AI to improve its product, particularly by helping new artists be discovered by a larger audience.
Both Spotify and Meta are open to regulations, but they want these regulations to avoid hampering innovation in the AI industry.
The European Union’s concern is genuine, as most public doesn’t want their data used for AI training. Recently, Meta faced significant backlash when it announced plans to use public data from Facebook and Instagram to train its AI models, offering the option to opt out of this scenario only to EU users.
1. I'm legit shocked by the design of @Meta's new notification informing us they want to use the content we post to train their AI models. It's intentionally designed to be highly awkward in order to minimise the number of users who will object to it. Let me break it down. pic.twitter.com/rhKNFt7CEu
— Tantacrul (@Tantacrul) May 26, 2024
It’s not just Meta; Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, also sparked outrage online by claiming that all publicly available information on the Internet is free to be used for training AI models.
Given all this, regulatory bodies must develop regulations that manage the use of public data without stifling innovation in AI technology.
