After nearly a year of pause, Meta has finally announced that its AI chatbot Meta AI has re-launched into the European market. Starting this week, Meta AI will be launched on four major platforms, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, including 41 European countries and 21 overseas regions. However, the initial stage is limited to text-based chat functions, and users cannot use this tool to perform operations such as generating or editing images, asking photos related questions, etc.
Meta AI was originally launched in the United States in 2023, and although Meta had planned to introduce the assistant to Europe, Meta had to suspend its launch plans in the region due to the request of Irish privacy regulators. Regulators are asking it to delay model training using content posted by Facebook and Instagram users. In addition, the company has also suspended the launch of its multimodal Llama AI model in the EU due to similar regulatory concerns.
Currently, Meta says its AI assistant will only serve as a chatbot in Europe, with its main functions including helping users brainstorm, plan their itineraries or use network information to answer specific questions. European users can also use Meta AI to showcase certain types of content on their Instagram dynamics. It is worth noting that the model is not trained using the personal data of EU users.
"After nearly a year of close communication, we finally launched this service. Currently, we only offer a plain text model in the region, which is not trained using first-party data from EU users. We will continue to work with regulators to enable European people to use Meta's artificial intelligence innovations and enjoy the advantages that these innovative technologies are already available in the rest of the world."
Last November, Meta began introducing some of its AI capabilities to its Ray-Bans smart glasses in the EU, but the glasses do not support multimodal features yet, and users cannot ask Meta AI for what they see. Meta does not seem to have given up plans to introduce more features to the European version of Meta AI, and the company said it will work to "stay in sync with the United States and expand our range of products over time". The re-launch of Meta AI in Europe marks an important step in the global promotion of artificial intelligence assistants, and also shows its cautious attitude in dealing with the complex regulatory environment in Europe.