Apple and Meta snub AI safety pact

Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI among signatories of EU pact

Apple and Meta were among several high-profile firms to reject the EU’s AI Pact calling for the safe development of AI (PA)

Apple and Meta have both rejected a new AI safety pact put forward by the European Union amid ongoing regulatory feuds.

Over 100 companies signed the EU AI Pact, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and ChatGPT creator OpenAI. Other notable non signatories included leading AI firm Anthropic and video-sharing platform TikTok.

The EU AI Pact is a voluntary pledge to develop safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence through three core actions: promoting AI awareness; identifying high-risk AI systems; and adopting an AI governance strategy.

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology with numerous beneficial effects. Yet, its advancement brings also potential risks. In light of this, the European Union has adopted the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on AI worldwide, the AI Act,” the pact states, referring to the AI regulation that came into force last month to provide a legal framework for companies developing artificial intelligence technologies.

“In this context and within the framework of the AI Pact, the AI Office calls on all organisations to proactively work towards implementing some of the key provisions of the AI Act, with the aim of establishing best practices for mitigating the risks to health, safety and fundamental rights.”

The refusal of Apple and Meta to join the pact comes amid ongoing disputes between the tech giants and EU governing authorities.

Earlier this year, Meta was forced to pause the roll out of its AI assistant in Europe following a ruling by the Irish Data Protection Commission concerning the Facebook and Instagram owner’s use of people’s data to train its large language models.

Meta said it was committed to meeting the regulatory requirements of the AI Act but would not be joining the pact at this time.

“We welcome harmonised EU rules and are focussing on our compliance work under the AI Act at this time, but we don’t rule out our joining the AI Pact at a later stage,” A Meta spokesperson said.

“We also shouldn’t lose sight of AI’s huge potential to foster European innovation and enable competition or else the EU will miss out on this once-in-a-generation opportunity.”