Meta expands AI chatbot to 41 European countries despite hurdles
Starting this week, the Meta AI chatbot will begin to be released in 41 European countries, Meta announced on Thursday. In mid-2024, following intervention from the Irish regulator, Meta halted plans to deploy this tool.
The company announced this week that the Meta AI assistant will be available in more than 60 markets, including 41 European countries. This is the largest expansion of Meta AI availability globally to date.
As communicated, Meta AI's first feature will be an intelligent chatbot, which will be available "for now" in six European languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German. The chatbot will be free on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
Meta explained that users will be able to interact with it through direct messaging, "asking questions, exploring interesting topics, or seeking help in solving problems." The company added that the assistant can also be used in group chats—initially on WhatsApp. Subsequently, the feature will be introduced on Messenger and for private messages on Instagram.
It was announced that Meta AI will also be integrated with platform search bars, allowing it to provide "best-matching" results from various sources, such as reels, photos, and posts from friends and followers.
Meta stated that the goal is to make its artificial intelligence tool available "on par" with the U.S. and that it intends to "gradually" expand the offerings in European countries.
Putting Meta AI technology into the hands of Europeans took significantly longer than the company planned. The reason for the delay was the European Union's complex regulatory system, stated the big tech company.
In the first half of 2024, Meta sent notifications to selected Facebook and Instagram users, including those in Poland, regarding the new AI policy and the possibility of using users' posts, for example, for training. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) reacted at that time (Meta's European activities are registered in Ireland), raising concerns about training AI on European users' data obtained from posts, photos, and captions published on Facebook and Instagram.
Meta offered the possibility to express objection to the new policy, but a unique form (opt-out) had to be completed for this purpose. Some experts, including the non-governmental organization Noyb, which deals with data protection, argued that such a practice contradicts GDPR. Noyb called the opt-out form offered by Meta "a farce." They also criticized Meta for retaining the right to disregard objections.
The organization emphasized that significant tech practices included many "dormant" Facebook accounts, with which users hardly interacted but still contained vast amounts of personal data. In June 2024, Noyb filed 11 complaints related to Meta AI with data protection authorities in various EU countries, including Poland’s Personal Data Protection Office (UODO).
Implementation of the new tool in the EU faces challenges
After the Irish Data Protection Commission intervened, Meta halted training AI on information from Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union. The Irish Commission, which represented several European authorities in the Meta AI matter, expressed satisfaction with this decision in a statement. Simultaneously, it announced that talks with the big tech companies would continue.
"We’re disappointed by the request from the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), our lead regulator, on behalf of the European DPAs, to delay training our large language models (LLMs) using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram — particularly since we incorporated regulatory feedback and the European DPAs have been informed since March," stated Meta in a statement released in early June 2024. The company then noted that Meta AI "at this point" will not be able to be deployed in the European Union.
"We are honouring all European objections. If an objection form is submitted before Llama training begins, then that person’s data won’t be used to train those models, either in the current training round or in the future," assured Meta in June 2024.
Meta Platforms is an American corporation that owns social media and communication platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Meta AI is the research division of Meta Platforms that develops artificial intelligence and augmented reality (AR) technologies. In 2023, Meta AI launched a family of large language models under the name Llama, which has been updated several times since then.
