After a brief delay, meta says that it has begun rolling out certain AI features to users of its Ray-Ban Meta AR glasses in France, Italy and Spain.
Starting today, people in these countries can access Meta's AI assistant, Meta AI, and use their voice to get answers to common questions (e.g., “What are good gift ideas for my children ages 6 and eight?”) . According to Meta, as a part of the update, Meta AI now supports French, Italian and Spanish along with English.
“Since our launch in September 2023, we now have been working diligently to be sure that Ray-Ban Meta glasses comply with Europe’s complex regulatory system,” the corporate wrote in a blog post. “We are pleased to introduce Meta AI and its revolutionary features to parts of the EU and stay up for expanding into additional European countries soon.”
The upgrade includes multi-modal features available on Ray-Ban Meta glasses within the US, Canada and Australia – notably the power to get answers to questions on what's within the glasses camera's field of view (e.g. “Tell me more about this landmark”). Meta says it’s working to bring multimodality to more countries “in the longer term.”
Meta has previously raised concerns about its ability to comply with the AI ​​Act, the EU law that establishes a legal and regulatory framework for AI, calling the law's implementation “too unpredictable.” Provisions of the GDPR, the EU data protection law, which relate to AI training are also controversial for the corporate. Meta trains AI models, including the models that power features of its Ray-Ban Meta glasses, on the general public data of Instagram and Facebook users who haven’t opted out – data that’s subject to GDPR guarantees in Europe .
EU regulators earlier this 12 months asked Meta to stop training on European user data while they assessed the corporate's GDPR compliance. Meta gave in and at the identical time advocated one open letter calls for a “modern interpretation” of the GDPR that “doesn’t reject progress.”
In early fall, Meta announced that it might resume training on UK user data after “incorporating regulatory feedback” right into a revised opt-out process. And shortly thereafter, the corporate introduced select AI features to Ray-Ban Meta glasses within the UK (in addition to six other countries). However, Meta has not yet released an update on its model training practices in the remainder of the Union.
