Apple, Meta ignore EU artificial intelligence regulatory initiative for now

The EU's AI Pact has a lot of big-name tech companies pledging to develop AI in a safe way, but Apple and Meta are the two outliers who aren't getting involved.

The European Commission announced on Wednesday that it had secured over a hundred signatures from companies signing up to the EU Artificial Intelligence Pact. Made up of voluntary pledges, the pact asks companies to work to ensure that AI is safe and produced in a responsible way.

The list of companies taking part in the pact includes quite a few major names, including Adobe, Google, IBM, HP, Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Open Ai, the creator of ChatGPT. However, that list doesn't include two major names in AI: Apple and Meta.

Apple has yet to say why it hasn't joined the pact, but Meta already has. Meta told Politico that it won't "rule out our joining the AI Pact at a later stage."

Meta went on to say it welcomes "harmonized EU rules and are focusing on our compliance work under the AI Act at this time." Meta adds "We also shouldn't lose sight of AI's huge potential to foster European innovation and enable competition, or else the EU will miss out on this one-in-a-generation opportunity."

What is the AI Pact

The AI Pact is a set of voluntary pledges that a company can sign up to undertake with regard to AI development and operation.

There are three core pledges to be undertaken, including creating an AI governance strategy to work towards future compliance with the AI Act, a legal framework for AI. Companies also should identify AI systems that could be categorized as "high-risk" under the AI Act.

Firms must also promote AI literacy and awareness among staff to ensure the ethical and responsible development of AI technologies.

Pact signees can also take on other extra pledges, including ensuring human oversight, the mitigation of risk, and transparent labeling of certain AI-generated content, such as deepfakes. More than half of the signees committed to the additional pledges.

Apple's AI development

So far, Apple's AI development has been relatively slow compared to the rest of the industry. It is, however, getting close to bringing out its Apple Intelligence suite of improvements to iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

As for Apple's efforts to make development of AI safer, it has already included rules in its AI to minimize the chance of hallucinations when answering prompts. Its creations also enshrine privacy for users, such as only performing off-device processing on servers using secure elements that include end-to-end encryption.

Apple has also signed up to adhere to voluntary AI safeguards, agreeing to a presidential executive order that deals with safety, minimizing risk, and establishing best practices for security.

Even so, despite not having its signature on the list, Apple could still sign up for the EU's AI Pact in the future.

That future may be a bit far away given the current spat between the EU and Apple over the Digital Markets Act. Apple said it wouldn't bring Apple Intelligence to the EU because of the DMA's limitations. The EU took the refusal to be a "stunning declaration" of anti-competitiveness.