Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek have penned a joint statement critiquing the EU’s open-source AI regulations, claiming it risks leaving the continent behind.

The letter claimed that Europe hosts “more open-source developers than America” and is therefore in perfect position to make the most of open-source AI.

“Yet its fragmented regulatory structure, riddled with inconsistent implementation, is hampering innovation and holding back developers,” the joint statement said.

“Instead of clear rules that inform and guide how companies do business across the continent, our industry faces overlapping regulations and inconsistent guidance on how to comply with them.”

Spotify’s CEO went on to say that it is “well aware that we remain one of only a few” European tech successes, giving reference to its early adoption of AI for its success.

“A simplified regulatory structure would not only accelerate the growth of open-source AI but also provide crucial support to European developers and the broader creator ecosystem that contributes to and thrives on these innovations.”

Specifically, the letter targeted the EU’s regulatory approach as being uneven, calling out its recent decision which forced Meta to delay training its models on content shared publicly on Facebook and Instagram.

The letter said this decision was “not because any law has been violated but because regulators haven’t agreed on how to proceed.”

While this may be true, it does not necessarily make the decision to delay wrong. Lawmakers across the globe are, understandably, unsure on how to proceed on regulating a technology that has yet gone unseen.

With even the creators of AI urging for regulation, governments are grappling with how to regulate the emerging technology. Taking a cautious approach may stall progress in certain areas, but it can also offer protection to people whose data would otherwise be scrapped to train AI models.

OpenAI is already facing backlash for data scraping without consent to train their AI models, and copyright lawsuits continue to crop up across the globe.

Recommended reading

• Meta Delays AI Training in Europe Following Regulatory Concern
• New Meta AI Model is Free and Open Source
• EU AI Act “Riddled” with Loopholes

Europe is known as a regulatory leader when it comes to tech, with its landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) transforming the data landscape in an effort to ensure data privacy.

Still, Spotify and Meta make a decent point: “In the short term, delaying the use of data that is routinely used in other regions means that most powerful AI models won’t reflect the collective knowledge, culture, and language of Europe – and Europeans won’t get to use the latest AI products.”

The statement said that these fears are coming to fruition – Meta will not be able to release its upcoming model, Llama multimodal, which claims to be capable of understanding images, in Europe under current regulatory uncertainty.

“That means European organisations won’t be able to get access to the latest open-source technology, and European citizens will be left with AI built for someone else,” the statement warns.

The CEOs warn that laws meant to increase European sovereignty and competitiveness are actually doing the opposite, and the tech leaders call for a new approach.

“We believe that open-source AI can help European organisations make the most of this new technology by levelling the playing field, and we hope that the EU doesn’t limit the possibilities that we are only starting to explore,” the statement read.