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. 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 like Llama – based on text or multi-modal – 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, services we build on them, won’t understand or reflect European knowledge, culture or languages. The EU will also miss out on other innovations, like Meta’s AI assistant, which is on track to be the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of this year.
Europe faces a choice that will impact the region for decades.
It can choose to reassert the principle of harmonisation enshrined in regulatory frameworks like the GDPR so that AI innovation happens here at the same scale and speed as elsewhere. Or, it can continue to reject progress, betray 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
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
Prof. Dagmar Schuller
CEO, audEERING
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
1”Is generative AI a game changer?”, JP Morgan, February 2024
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