Microsoft is likely to sign EU AI code of practice, Meta rejects guidelines

Microsoft is likely to sign the European Union's code of practice to help businesses adhere to the Bullock's groundbreaking artificial intelligence rules, the president told Reuters on Friday, with the metaplatform rejecting the guidelines.

The voluntary code of practice, created by 13 independent experts, aims to provide legal certainty to signatories. They should publish a summary of the content used to train generic AI models and implement policies to comply with EU copyright law.

This code is part of the AI Act, which came into effect in June 2024, and applies to Google's owners Alphabet, Facebook owners Meta, Openai, Humanity, Mistral, and thousands of companies.

“I think there's a good chance I'll sign it. I need to read the document,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told Reuters.

“Our goal is to find ways to be collaborative. At the same time, one of the things we really welcome is our direct involvement with the industry through our AI office,” he said.

Meta repeatedly criticised the code.

“Meta will not sign it. This code introduces a lot of legal uncertainty to model developers and measures that go far beyond the scope of AI law,” said Joel Caplan, Meta's Global Affairs Chief Officer, in a LinkedIn blog post on Friday.

The US social media giant has the same concerns as a group of 45 European companies, he said.

“We share the concerns raised by these companies that this excess will narrow down the development and deployment of European frontier AI models and stunt European companies looking to build companies on top of that,” Kaplan said.