Meta Revives AI Chatbot in Europe After Yearlong Hiatus

Meta is launching its AI chatbot in Europe nearly a year after halting its rollout in the region. Starting this week, Meta AI will be accessible on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger across 41 European countries and 21 overseas territories, but it will initially be limited to text-based chats.

Meta AI debuted in the United States in 2023. Although the company aimed to introduce its assistant in Europe, it had to pause the rollout after the Irish data protection authority requested a halt to training on content posted by Facebook and Instagram users. The company also suspended the launch of its multimodal Llama AI model within the EU due to regulatory issues.

Currently, Meta states that its AI assistant will function solely as a text-based chatbot for users in Europe, assisting with brainstorming, travel planning, and answering specific queries using information from the internet. European users can also utilize Meta AI to showcase certain types of content in their Instagram feeds. However, they will not be able to use this tool for image creation or editing, nor for inquiring about photographs, as the model has not been trained on user data from the EU.

«This launch follows nearly a year of intensive engagement with various European regulators, and we are currently offering only a text-based model in the region, which has not been trained on third-party user data from the EU,» stated Meta spokesperson Ellie Heitric, as reported by The Verge. «We will continue to work with regulators to ensure people in Europe have access to Meta’s AI innovations.»

Last November, Meta began integrating some AI features into its Ray-Ban smart glasses in the EU, but the glasses currently do not support multimodal capabilities that would allow users to ask Meta AI about what they see. It seems that Meta is still committed to expanding features in the European version of Meta AI.

*Meta and its products (Instagram, Facebook) are banned in the Russian Federation.

[Source](https://www.theverge.com/news/632876/meta-ai-europe-whatsapp-facebook-instagram-rollout)