A clear memo for the EU: the US economic cold war is not only with China
A recent statement from Meta to Axios adds up to previous statements from companies like Apple regarding Europe:
Meta plans to incorporate expansively the new version of its AI tools, which can reason across video, audio, images, and text (multimodal models), in a wide range of products, including smartphones and its Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. The only exception beyond China, where they've been historically banned for decades, is Europe.
"We will release a multimodal Llama model over the coming months, but not in the EU due to the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment."
Meta says its decision also means that European companies cannot use the multimodal models even though they are being released under an open license. It could also prevent companies outside of the EU from offering products and services in Europe that use the new multimodal models. This means it's not just PR but a decision that will soon impact their bottom line.
This is not new and is possibly a payback for Threads' launch being severely delayed due to a lack of compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Notably, at launch, Threads required users to sign in using their Instagram accounts, but it now also allows access without creating a profile, defusing some of the monopolistic stances Meta wanted to leverage.
Don't be fooled into thinking that European companies will be left out of the AI loop by these moves. First and foremost, they're an amazing protection for our markets, preventing some of the usual GAFAM bullying tactics from happening. It might also be an opportunity for our own ecosystems to slowly wake up and seriously consider our tech sovereignty.
Philippe MEDA
If the regulators are finally doing their job in an educated and proactive way, we should hope that businesses and entrepreneurs will take a hint.
This is also about facing a simple, hard truth: the US is not our 'buddy' in tech. They will try to grow their economic advantage by any means possible, keeping Europe a captive and dependent market.
Colonialism is not dead. It just changed its shape.
