Meta's AI models are among the most data protection-friendly of all; anyone can install them on their own computer and use them there without any further data flowing anywhere. Data protection is now preventing this in the EU

 

"The European Union's rules were intended to bring Europe forward in terms of AI. Now it is clear: That didn't work.

 

Ursula von der Leyen was proud and very optimistic. "It is the first of its kind in the world," she told the assembled entrepreneurs and managers in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "And another example of how democracies and companies can strengthen each other."

 

The President of the EU Commission spoke about the law with which the European Union regulates artificial intelligence. The hope: The new standard will protect Europeans from the dark side of AI. This will create trust. The technology will develop legally in the EU and find customers. Other countries will adopt the rules, then European companies will have a competitive advantage.

 

The law has only been passed for four months, not yet fully in force - and it is already clear that these goals have been missed by a long way. In California, the home of the most popular AI applications, there will be no rules any time soon. Last week, the governor there vetoed the planned law. Some thought it was too harsh, others not harsh enough, and what the governor himself thought is not entirely clear. In any case, the Californian companies can continue to develop it with all their might for now. And it is not foreseeable that the finished law will be more similar to the EU rules.

 

"America innovates, China copies and Europe regulates"

 

We could have known. EU parliamentarians had already expressed all these hopes when the General Data Protection Regulation came into force. Other countries soon took their cue from it, it was said proudly. As if the EU could export laws and thus compensate for the fact that it does not get much done in IT matters. Things turned out differently. When Facebook hastily launched a new social network called "Threads" a few years ago, the data protection functions were not yet ready. Shortly before, Italy had blocked ChatGPT. The result: Facebook started without the EU.

 

Large companies have obviously learned from this: You can do this more often. Google's artificial intelligence was available in 150 countries when it was released, but by chance not in the EU. Apple recently informed Europeans that its artificial intelligence would not necessarily come to them for the time being. Apple was accused of greed at the time. But anyone who accuses Apple of greed has to admit: Apparently not even greed makes the EU attractive.

 

Meta, the company behind Instagram and Whatsapp, does something similar. Because it was not allowed to train its AI on data sets from its European users, the AI ​​is not coming to Europe. Data protection has worked - on the one hand. 

 

On the other hand, Meta's AI models are among the most data protection-friendly of all; anyone can install them on their own computer and use them there without any further data flowing anywhere. Data protection is now preventing this in the EU.

 

So do European companies at least have a competitive advantage? The answer is provided by a Hamburg start-up called Oxolo. The company has previously developed an artificial intelligence that generated videos. But in August the company ceased operations. The founders also blamed EU legislation: The company is heavily regulated as a potential generator of fake videos, but it is unclear exactly how it should behave.

 

It is still uncertain whether Oxolo's failure will reduce the density of fake videos in the EU. The companies outside the EU still exist. Now start-ups often fail, and regulation is not always to blame.

 

But Oxford University has now investigated the effect of data protection rules: small companies lost three percent of their sales and nine percent of their profits. The researchers only found virtually no negative effects on large IT companies.

 

"America innovates, China copies and Europe regulates," goes an old saying. China has learned from its mistakes. Now it's Europe's turn." [1]

 

1. Europas Debakel mit der KI. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (online) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH. Oct 4, 2024. Von Patrick Bernau