AN OPEN LETTER

Europe needs regulatory certainty on AI

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.

Generative AI - woman using laptop
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.

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, 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

Anetta Caplanova
Professor, The University of Economics in Bratislava

Anton Balakirev
CEO, Deep Breath BV

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

Gergely Várhelyi-Tóth
CEO, roboGaze

Giuseppe Cassano
Director of the Department of Legal Sciences European School of Economics

James Sandoval
Founder & CEO, MeasureMatch

Jan Harries
Co-Founder & CEO, ellamind

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

Markku Räsänen
Co-founder and CEO, ConfidentialMind

Maximilian Moehring
CEO, DECAID Group

Michael O'Connor
CEO, Mr. Kite

Niels Andriesse
CTO & Co-Founder, Supermoon

Pál Szilágyi
Director, Competition Law Research Centre

Peter Sarlin
Co-founder, Silo AI

Roozbeh Bandpey
Founder & CEO, Emolysis

Sebastian Gensior
Founder, Slate Mountains Capital

Sébastien BUREL
CEO, Haruni

Sergey Ivliev
Chairman of the Board, Vlinder

Wouter Janssen
CEO, Tekst.com

8vance
adaptive
artefact
audEERING
bineric
campusAI
consumer choice center EU
cyfrowa polska
criteo
engineering
ericsson
essilor luxotica
estech
exor
flower labs
fully ventures
I-com
infobalt
klarna
korniaAI
la villa numeris
meta
metlen
mirakl
nabla
photoroom
pirelli
prada
publicis
quansight
salestube
sap
siloai
spotify
taxfix
thyssenkrupp
unbabel

1”Is generative AI a game changer?”, JP Morgan, February 2024

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