Over 100 companies have signed on as initial supporters of the EU AI Pact, the European Commission announced today. The pact asks companies to voluntarily follow AI Act principles before the law takes effect. Apple and Meta are notably missing from the list of supporters.
Signatories include major AI firms like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as European businesses across industries such as IT, telecom, healthcare, banking and automotive.
OpenAI stated that the pact's focus on AI literacy, deployment, and governance aligns with its mission of developing safe AI that benefits society broadly.
The pact supports the industry's voluntary commitments to apply the principles of the EU AI Act even before it comes into force. The voluntary commitments cover three main areas: Creating an AI governance strategy, identifying potentially high-risk AI systems, and promoting AI literacy among employees.
In addition to these core commitments, more than half of the signatories have agreed to further commitments, according to the EU. These include ensuring human oversight, mitigating risks, and transparently labeling certain types of AI-generated content such as deepfakes.
Meta and Apple are missing
Notably absent are Apple and Meta. Apple is currently not bringing AI systems into the EU, citing concerns with the DMA, while Meta is lobbying against EU regulations, claiming "regulatory uncertainties."
Possible reasons for their opposition include not wanting to subject their AI systems to high-risk regulations, disclose their data and, in Meta's case, collect user data for AI training. Meta has stopped officially offering its open-source multimodal Llama models for download in the EU.
