Fragmented regulation means the EU risks missing out on the AI era.
We are a group of companies, researchers and institutions integral to Europe and working to serve hundreds of millions of Europeans. We want to see Europe succeed and thrive, including in the field of cutting-edge AI research and technology. But the reality is Europe has become less competitive and less innovative compared to other regions and it now risks falling further behind in the AI era due to inconsistent regulatory decision making.
In the absence of consistent rules, the EU is going to miss out on two cornerstones of AI innovation. The first are developments in "open" models that are made available without charge for everyone to use, modify and build on, multiplying the benefits and spreading social and economic opportunity. Open models strengthen sovereignty and control by allowing organisations to download and fine-tune the models wherever they want, removing the need to send their data elsewhere. The second are the latest "multimodal" models, which operate fluidly across text, images and speech and will enable the next leap forward in AI. The difference between text-only models and multimodal is like the difference between having only one sense and having all five of them.
Frontier-level open models – based on text or multimodal – can turbocharge productivity, drive scientific research and add hundreds of billions of euros to the European economy. Public institutions and researchers are already using these models to speed up medical research and preserve languages, while established businesses and start-ups are getting access to tools they could never build or afford themselves. Without them, the development of AI will happen elsewhere – depriving Europeans of the technological advances enjoyed in the US, China and India.
Research estimates that Generative AI could increase global GDP by 10% over the coming decade1 and EU citizens shouldn't be denied that growth.
The EU's ability to compete with the rest of the world on AI and reap the benefits of open-source models rests on its single market and shared regulatory rulebook. If companies and institutions are going to invest tens of billions of euros to build Generative AI for European citizens, they require clear rules, consistently applied, enabling the use of European data. But in recent times, regulatory decision making has become fragmented and unpredictable, while interventions by the European Data Protection Authorities have created huge uncertainty about what kinds of data can be used to train AI models. This means the next generation of open-source AI models, and products and services that we build on them, won't understand or reflect European knowledge, culture or languages.
Europe faces a choice that will affect the region for decades.
It can choose to reassert the principle of harmonisation enshrined in regulatory frameworks such as the GDPR, and offer a modern interpretation of GDPR provisions that still respects its underlying values, so that AI innovation happens here at the same scale and speed as elsewhere. Or it can continue to reject progress, contradict the ambitions of the single market and watch as the rest of the world builds on technologies that Europeans will not have access to.
We hope European policymakers and regulators see what is at stake if there is no change of course. Europe can't afford to miss out on the widespread benefits from responsibly built open AI technologies that will accelerate economic growth and unlock progress in scientific research. For that we need harmonised, consistent, quick and clear decisions under EU data regulations that enable European data to be used in AI training for the benefit of Europeans. Decisive action is needed to help unlock the creativity, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism that will ensure Europe's prosperity, growth and technical leadership.
Signed,
Alexandre Lebrun
CEO, Nabla
André Martins
VP of AI Research, Unbabel
Aureliusz Górski
Founder & CEO, CampusAI
Börje Ekholm
President & CEO, Ericsson
Benedict Macon-Cooney
Chief Policy Strategist, Tony Blair Institute
Christian Klein
CEO of SAP SE
Prof. Dagmar Schuller
CEO, audEERING
Daniel Ek
Founder and CEO of Spotify
Daniel J. Beutel
Co-Founder & CEO, Flower Labs
David Lacombled
Président, La villa numeris
Diarmuid Gill
Chief Technology Officer, Criteo
Edgar Riba
President, Kornia AI
Egle Markeviciute
Secretary, Consumer Choice Center Europe
Eugenio Valdano
PhD
Federico Marchetti
Founder of YOOX
Francesco Milleri
Chairman and CEO, EssilorLuxottica
Georgi Gerganov
ggml.ai
Han Stoffels
CEO, 8vance
Hira Mehmood
Co Founder & Board member, Bineric AI
Hosuk Lee-Makiyama
Director, ECIPE
John Elkann
CEO, Exor
Josef Sivic
Researcher, Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University
Julien Launay
CEO & Co-founder, Adaptive ML
Lorenzo Bertelli
CMO, Prada Group
Maciej Hutyra
CEO, SalesTube Sp. z o.o.
Marco Baroni
Research Professor, ICREA
Marco Tronchetti Provera
Executive Vice Chairman, Pirelli
Mark Zuckerberg
Founder and CEO, Meta
Miguel Ferrer
EsTech
Martin Ott
CEO, Taxfix SE
Matthieu Rouif
CEO, Photoroom
Maurice Lévy
Chairman emeritus Publicis Groupe
Maximo Ibarra
CEO, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SPA
Michal Kanownik
CEO, Digital Poland Association
Miguel López
CEO, thyssenkrupp AG
Minh Dao
CEO, FULLY AI
Niklas von Weihe
CTO, FULLY AI
Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi
CS Professor, University of Milan, Italy
Patrick Collison
Patrick Pérez
AI researcher
Philippe Corrot
Co-founder & CEO, Mirakl
Ralf Gommers
Director, Quansight
Sebastian Siemiatkowski
CEO and Co-founder, Klarna
Simonas Černiauskas
CEO, INFOBALT
Stefano da Empoli
President, Institute for Competitiveness (I-Com)
Stefano Iacus
Senior Research Scientist, Harvard University
Vincent Luciani
CEO, Artefact
Vivian Bouzali
CCCO, METLEN Energy and Metals
Yann LeCun
VP & Chief AI Scientist, Meta
Aidan Connolly
CEO, Idiro Analytics
Alex Kwiatkowski
CEO, Elephant AI
Alexei Zhurba
CPO, Next Step Fusion
Anetta Caplanova
Professor, The University of Economics in Bratislava
Anton Balakirev
CEO, Deep Breath BV
Antony Alloin
Founder, AIRobin Solutions BV
Barry Downes
Managing Partner, Sure Valley Ventures
Bart de Witte
Hippo AI Foundation
Bert Boerman
Founder, Governance.com
Bradley Dillon
CEO, Luxonis
Catherine Mulligan
Advanced Research Fellow, Imperial College London
Christopher Schröder
Researcher
Daniel Friedlaender
SVP, CCIA Europe
Daniel Langkilde
CEO, Kognic
David Černý
Research Fellow, Institute of Computer Science, Czech Academy of Sciences
David Vivancos
CEO, Artificiology.com
Denis Shiryaev
CEO, neural.love
Diego Tellez
Founder, theintellecthub.com
Eliano Marques
Founder, Datamentors
Francesco Antonio Sessa
CEO, Qubitdata
Gergely Várhelyi-Tóth
CEO, roboGaze
Giuseppe Cassano
Director of the Department of Legal Sciences European School of Economics
Hamidreza Hosseini
Founder & CEO, ECODYNAMICS
Ivan Dukic
CTO and Co-Founder, Localmind AI
James Corbett
Director, Eirmersive
James Sandoval
Founder & CEO, MeasureMatch
Jan Harries
Co-Founder & CEO, ellamind
Jaromír Hanzal
Director, Member of the Board, AAVIT
Kay Jebelli
Senior Director for Europe, Chamber of Progress
Leonel Morgado
Full Professor, Universidade Aberta
Lukáš Benzl
Managing Director, Czech Association of Artificial Intelligence
Marco Trombetti
CEO, Translated
Mario Rosati
Co Founder and CEO, E4 Analytics SRL
Markku Räsänen
Co-founder and CEO, ConfidentialMind
Martin Jaggi
Professor, EPFL
Massimo Ruffolo
CEO, altilia.ai
Matthieu Courtecuisse
Founder & CEO, Sia Partners
Maximilian Moehring
CEO, DECAID Group
Michael O'Connor
CEO, Mr. Kite
Niels Andriesse
CTO & Co-Founder, Supermoon
Oleg Stavitskii
CEO, Endel
Pál Szilágyi
Director, Competition Law Research Centre
Peter Sarlin
Co-founder, Silo AI
Pierre-Louis Corteel
Co-founder & CEO, Entropia.io
Piotr Maczuga
Founder, Digital Creators Foundation
Robert Drews
CEO, DataSpark GmbH
Roeland Hofkens
CPTO, LanguageWire
Roozbeh Bandpey
Founder & CEO, Emolysis
Sebastian Gensior
Founder, Slate Mountains Capital
Sébastien BUREL
CEO, Haruni
Sergey Ivliev
Chairman of the Board, Vlinder
Sven Schütt
CEO, IU Group N.V.
Vattan PS
Founder, New Nordics AI
Wouter Janssen
CEO, Tekst.com
1"Is generative AI a game changer?", JP Morgan, February 2024