Meta refuses to sign EU’s AI code of practice

Meta has refused to sign the European Union’s code of practice for its AI Act, weeks before the bloc’s rules for providers of general-purpose AI models take effect.

“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” wrote Meta’s chief global affairs officer Joel Kaplan in a post on LinkedIn. “We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models and Meta won’t be signing it. This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”

The EU’s code of practice — a voluntary framework published earlier this month — aims to help companies implement processes and systems to comply with the bloc’s legislation for regulating AI. Among other things, the code requires companies to provide and regularly update documentation about their AI tools and services; bans developers from training AI on pirated content; and comply with content owners’ requests to not use their works in their data sets.

Calling the EU’s implementation of the legislation “over-reach,” Kaplan claimed that the law will “throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them.”

A risk-based regulation for applications of artificial intelligence, the AI Act bans some “unacceptable risk” use cases outright, such as cognitive behavioral manipulation or social scoring. The rules also define a set of “high-risk” uses, such as biometrics and facial recognition, and in domains like education and employment. The act also requires developers to register AI systems and meet risk and quality management obligations.

Tech companies from across the world, including those at the forefront of the AI race like Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Mistral AI have been fighting the rules, even urging the European Commission to delay its roll out. But the Commission held firm, saying it will not change its timeline.

Also on Friday, the EU published guidelines for providers of AI models ahead of rules that will go into effect on August 2. These rules would affect providers of “general-purpose AI models with systemic risk,” like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta. Companies that have such models on the market before August 2 will have to comply with the legislation by that date.