Irish privacy watchdog has ‘unresolved questions’ about Meta’s AI tool

The Irish data protection authority still has open questions about Meta’s AI tool which the tech giant started to roll-out across Europe last week, a spokesperson for the privacy watchdog told Euronews.

“The DPC, as Lead Supervisory Authority for Meta, has been examining Meta AI over recent months with our colleague Supervisory Authorities across the EU/EEA and we will keep it under review as it rolls-out to users over the coming weeks,” the spokesperson said, adding: “However, in terms of WhatsApp, we still have some open questions that require answering and we continue to engage with WhatsApp on these.” 

MetaAI was introduced in the US in September 2023, followed by India in June 2024, and in the UK in October. It allows users to ask questions to a chat function on its platforms Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp.

Meta’s plan to continue expansion in Europe was halted last summer due to “regulatory unpredictability” and questions by the Irish privacy authority surrounding the use of personal data of adult users of Facebook and Instagram to train large language models (LLMs). 

“Met hasbeen fully transparent with the Irish Data Protection Commission on the launch of Meta AI on our messaging services and we are confident in our compliance with all data protection requirements," the company said in a statement to Euronews.

Failure to comply with the bloc’s data protection rules – the General Data Protection Regulation – could result in fines.

Platform rules

Certain aspects of MetaAI also fall within the scope of the Digital Services Act (DSA), Europe’s platform rules, which sets standards in areas of user safety and transparency.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told Euronews last week that it is awaiting a risk assessment by Meta to check whether the tool meets the DSA obligations.

The Commission on Monday said that it understands from dialogue with the company that “the first elements to be implemented are not relevant under the DSA.” 

It will, however, “continue to monitor” the deployment, the spokesperson added.